A coalition of animal welfare and conservation groups say the European Union's newly released fisheries and aquaculture plan could cause the bloc’s seafood companies to lose access to the U.S. market.
The package of measures publicized by the European Commission on 21 February is intended to “improve the sustainability and resilience of the E.U.’s fisheries and aquaculture sector,” the E.C. said in a press release. The plan focuses on four items: communication on the energy transition of the fisheries and aquaculture sectors, a plan to protect and restore marine ecosystems for “sustainable and resilient fisheries,” updating the common fisheries policy to focus on “today and tomorrow,” and studying the market organization for Europe's fishery and aquaculture products.
The plan includes new goals for E.U. fisheries on marine mammal protection, such as methods to reduce bycatch of protected species, and a push for more data collection. But according to a coalition comprised of the Animal Welfare Institute, Environmental Investigation Agency, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Center for Biological Diversity, the protections outlined in the plan may be implemented too slowly to meet mandated by U.S. import rules.
“Ambitious and timely concrete actions to ensure adherence with both E.U. and U.S. legislation are lacking in the commission’s action plan,” Environmental Investigation Agency Ocean Campaigner Sarah Dolmans said in a release. “E.U. member-states need to urgently step up efforts to prevent cetacean bycatch, putting strong policies and effective measures in place. Otherwise, they risk not being compliant with U.S. standards and thus threaten E.U. member state exports to the United States.”
The U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) has provisions requiring fisheries outside the U.S. to meet the same standards as U.S. fisheries with respect to protecting marine mammals. Nations seeking to export to the U.S. need to file applications and reach a comparability finding with the U.S., or risk being shut out of the market.
NOAA Fisheries recently extended the deadline to evaluate applications on comparability findings, giving nations until 31 December, 2023, to receive a comparability finding or risk losing access to the U.S. market.
E.U. Commissioner for Environment, Oceans, and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičius said one of the core tenet of the new plan is to “protect and restore” the E.U.’s marine ecosystems. The plan calls on E.U. member-states to be more ambitious in implementing measures that are available to reduce bycatch and better protect sensitive species," he said.
“We are proposing concrete actions to restore marine ecosystems and to reduce the impact of fishing activities on the marine environment, thus responding also to the commitments the E.U. made in the historic agreement reached at COP15 in Montreal on a new global biodiversity framework,” he said. “We know this is a challenging task. For this reason, the transformation will be gradual and we will promote dialogue between all communities to lay the foundation for a resilient fisheries and aquaculture sector.”
However, according to the coalition of environmental groups, a gradual implementation of the new E.U. measures will fall short of the standards. The new plan calls on member countries to submit updated data collection frameworks by the end of 2024, a full year later than the U.S. deadline for comparability. That could be a problem for countries where data collection is inadequate – a recent report by conservationists claims some of France’s fisheries fall short of the standards.
“European countries have the burden of demonstrating that their fisheries meet U.S. standards, which limit the killing of whales and dolphins during commercial fishing,” Natural Resources Defense Council Global Biodiversity Conservation Director Zak Smith said. “Without reliable data on populations, bycatch, and the impact of bycatch reduction efforts, European seafood exports should be banned.”
Photo courtesy of the European Commission
