Next week in Brussels European Union member states and the European Commission will decide whether to support bluefin tuna conservation – or to encourage the continued willful overexploitation of an endangered marine resource. It is said that the European Commission’s Directorate General for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs, DG MARE, will consider DG Environment’s support for a listing of the severely overfished Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to temporarily ban all international trade – the same day that EU member states are asked to give their own feedback on the proposal.
Tony Long, Director of WWF’s European Policy Office in Brussels, said that it would be scandalous if the European Commission were to allow the region’s most emblematic marine species associated with a thousand-year-old fishing tradition to go extinct on its watch. French President Nicolas Sarkozy was first to express his country’s support for an international trade ban through CITES, saying that it is against this great responsibility that we will be judged by our children and the generations to come.
Experts believe that if the EU Commission and member states cannot reach consensus today, the decision risks instead running to a showdown of all 27 European Commissioners, as early as next Wednesday. Tony Long said that it would be extraordinary if DG MARE, the very department tasked with protecting this iconic species, sought to block a CITES listing to ban trade in this endangered animal.
