Bluefin tuna ban rejected

The powerful bluefin tuna lobby has shown its teeth. Six of the 27 EU member states this week blocked a proposal by the European Commission to ban the international trade in this threatened fish species.

Among them is Spain, which two years ago reacted positively on a moratorium on tuna fishing, France, where even president Nicolas Sarkozy supported the trade embargo, and Malta, homeland of the EU fisheries commissioner Joe Borg where illegal trade practices and fraudulent fishery administration have been constantly in the media.

The blocking of the proposal is a "huge disappointment" says Gerban-Jan Gerbrandij, a member of European parliament for the Dutch left-wing liberal party D66 (part of the ALDE group) and one of those behind the request to the Commission to stop the trade in bluefin tuna. "When it comes to making a choice it seems environmental issues lose out to economic interests."

The European tuna policy has thus become more of a test case: the protection of a fish threatened with extinction in European waters versus fishing interests in the form of a limited but lucrative trade with the Japanese sushi industry. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) fears the predatory fish will die out in the eastern Atlantic Ocean before 2015.

The EU has been hampered in an effective reduction or even a moratorium on the catching of bluefin tuna for some years. European fishing fleets and tuna farms - where the catches of bluefin tuna are fattened up before being shot and exported to Japan - in Spain, France, Italy and Malta knew exactly how to manipulate the international body managing stocks ofbluefin tuna in the Atlantic (ICCAT) so that fishing quotas were set much higher than considered sustainable by fishery experts and biologists.

The ICCAT meeting last year in Marrakech - where the experts' advice was once again ignored and a moratorium pushed aside - the general opinion was that this put an end to the body's credibility when it comes to sustainable management. Environmental protectionists have long called the ICCAT the International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna.

New was the initiative taken last year by Monaco. The country backed the attempt by environmental organisations like WWF and Greenpeace to take the fight for the conservation of the bluefin tuna to a higher level. By having the fish placed on annex I of the CITES convention on international trade in threatened species, fisheries would be restrained. Monaco set a good example by banning bluefin tuna from its restaurants.

It had an effect. A growing number of European countries, including the Netherlands, Britain and Germany, backed the initiative. Following a letter to Commission president José Manuel Barroso, even the Commission backed the proposal. It was a victory for the Greek environment commissioner Stavros Dimas over the Maltese fisheries commissioner Joe Borg. Borg was under intense pressure at home, where thousands of jobs and millions of euros in trade are at risk. Malta has for several years been the subject of talk about large-scale fraud in tuna administration. The size of the Maltese tuna farms has grown so exponentially that inspectors say the island has become the 'revolving door' of the trade. The local press accuses Borg of being held hostage by local tuna interests.

According to Gerbrandij, the timing of the death of the initiative could not be more regrettable. "The decline in bio-diversity is an underestimated problem which could well have a more devastating effect than climate change."

The decision means the EU will avoid having to defend a ban at the ICCAT meeting in November. A possible ban on tuna fishing will therefore not come into effective in 2010, but in 2011 at the earliest. An interval in which to think up new tactics to continue fishing.