Bluefin tuna
EU pays millions in subsidies to bluefin tuna fleets
In response to a formal question from Green MEP Raül Romeva, the European Commission has revealed that the EU pays millions of Euros to European fishing fleets that target bluefin tuna.
Raül Romeva commented:
"While the EU has been talking conservation on bluefin tuna, it has been bankrolling its slide towards extinction. Since 2000, as bluefin tuna stocks have plummeted, the EU budget alone has yielded 34.5 million in subsidies to build or modernise vessels that target this fish. (1) This puts a Euro value on the EU's hypocrisy. The Commission has known for years that the bluefin fleets were too large. It nevertheless allowed Member States to further bloat the fleets with EU aid, supplemented with unknown further funds from their own budgets.
"In March next year, CITES will decide whether to list bluefin tuna on its endangered list, which would ban the international trade of this species. The EU must support such a ban and furthermore refrain from granting a single Euro in compensation to the ship-owners who have contributed to the decimation of bluefin tuna."
Notes to editors
(1) In the last nine years, 121 new vessels were built that participated in the bluefin fishery in 2009, including 15 modern purse seiners. A further 481 received money for modernisation. Nine vessels were scrapped, all of them artisanal in nature, despite claims to want to help the small-scale fishing fleets.
More detailed data can be found in this financial overview:
Vessels operating in 2008 which have received EU subsidies under the FIFG
See also previous Greens/EFA press release on subsidies to fish bluefin (25/11/08):
Fisheries: ICCAT and EU sink hopes of restoring bluefin tuna stocks
