The Fisheries Ministers of the European Union met today on 17 April 2007 under the chairmanship of Federal Minister Horst Seehofer with Mr. Joe Borg, EU Commissioner for Fisheries, in Senningen (Luxembourg) for a conference on problems of global importance for fisheries policy. "Illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing - the so-called IUU fisheries – and the destructive fishing practices constitute one of the major threats to global fish stocks," said Horst Seehofer, President of the EU Council. "The Ministers agreed that the sustainable protection of fish stocks numbers among the key challenges of the future alongside climate change," Seehofer added.
Today, IUU fisheries poses one of the most serious problems facing global fisheries. Given an estimated global volume of up to 9 billion euros per year, IUU fishing renders impossible a proper management of fisheries on the High Seas. It also causes great harm to legal fisheries in coastal waters, especially to those in the developing countries. Commissioner Borg intends to present a proposal setting out comprehensive measures to fight this type of fisheries on the basis of a broad consultation procedure, thus tightening the rules already in place. Particularly significant is the approach of denying products of IUU fishing access to the European market by demanding that their legality has to be confirmed upon importation by the flag state of the fishing vessel. In addition, measures against the involvement of EU citizens in IUU fisheries are crucial.
Federal Minister Seehofer, in his capacity as Council President, encouraged the European Commission to further expand the currently leading role of the EU in regional fisheries organisations in the fight against IUU fishing.
The Fisheries Ministers also discussed the importance of internationally binding rules to protect sensitive deepsea ecosystems against destructive fishing practices and to restrict fishing for deep-sea species on the High Seas, i.e. outside of the national territorial waters. In this context, Federal Minister Seehofer underlined the central role played by the Regional Fisheries Management Organisations established under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Seehofer therefore welcomed the European Commission's plan to create a binding Community regulatory framework shortly that is intended to implement the recommendations of the United Nations General Assembly (as the key element the principle of "reversal of the burden of proof" according to which the flag states have to conduct a thorough impact assessment of deep-sea fisheries on the basis of clearly defined criteria).
