EU fisheries ministers meeting in Luxembourg yesterday were close to agreement on measures needed to protect bluefin tuna stocks in the Mediterranean Sea and eastern Atlantic Ocean.
EU nations are expected to reduce fishing quotas for the threatened species when the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) meets next month in Marrakech, Morocco.
"We are all agreed that we must reduce production and preserve this resource, to better control the whole chain, not just the fishing," Michel Barnier, agriculture minister for France, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, told reporters.
Barnier said "a political agreement" would be reached on a common EU position for the European Commission to take to ICCAT.
"It is important that this rigor and collective discipline should be respected throughout the world," he said. "A European fishing industry which upholds this discipline has the right to ask that fishermen everywhere apply the same rules and the same discipline."
Environmental groups Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund have been critical of the EU and ICCAT for failing to protect bluefin tuna. Earlier this month, WWF called Italy’s tuna industry "totally out of control."
More than 50,000 metric tons of bluefin tuna are caught every year in the Mediterranean. To prevent stocks from collapsing, that figure should be limited to 15,000 metric tons in the short term, according to ICCAT.
