Officials from the European Union will soon convene with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe before making a final decision on whether to lift an EU-imposed ban on Sri Lankan fish handed down in January.
The EU delegates aim to fully assess the progress that Sri Lanka has made in preventing illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices; the EU recommended that the nation take steps to combat IUU fishing when the ban was first enacted. According to a senior official of the Fisheries Ministry, the decision will be taken once the review concludes.
“This would be a crucial visit from Brussels which will decide the possibility of lifting the ban from April next year,” said the official, as reported by The Sunday Times.
“The ministry has already undertaken to implement a process based on a road map comprising 57 tasks. We have completed all of them, the EU team’s assessment would be based on that,” the official explained further.
Meetings with Wickremesinghe and Fisheries Minister Mahinda Amaraweera, among others, are slated to take place over the coming days.
After the evaluation concludes, the EU delegate team will pull together an extensive report on Sri Lanka’s entire implementation process for the European Commission to consider when taking further action, according to the Times.