Posted on December, 04 2009

Brussels, Belgium: Europe poured €34.5 million of EU taxpayers’ money into increasing and modernizing its oversize bluefin tuna fleets over the very period it was coming to concede that excess fishing capacity was a key factor in overfishing and illegal fishing of collapsing bluefin stocks.

The information on 2000-2008 payments to the bluefin tuna fisheries was provided this week in response to a September question from Raül Romeva i Rueda, a Spanish Member of the European Parliament (MEP) with the ‘Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds’, part of the European Greens.

The delayed response meant the information was not available for November’s meeting of the International Commission on Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), which witnessed several heated discussions on the reduction of fishing capacity

Rueda was told that the largest portion of the money - €23 million - was aid for the construction of new boats including modern purse seiners (industrial high-tech vessels with purse-like nets that scoop up large amounts of tuna).

Some €10.5 million went into the modernisation of existing vessels while, in stark contradiction to recent EU rhetoric about the need to reduce the size of the fleet, only €1 million went into decommissioning boats, all of which were smaller artisanal vessels.

"I am shocked at the scale of subsidies "

The real level of subsidies is likely much higher, with unknown additional sums being pumped into the bloated fleet by EU member states.

Spanish boat owners were the largest beneficiaries of the 611 vessels involved, with the remainder shared between fleet owners in Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy and Malta.

Overcapacity has been identified as a key factor in catches that in 2007 were estimated at twice the legal levels set by ICCAT largely as a result of EU lobbying to be around twice the prudent levels advised by ICCAT’s scientists.

Average catch size of Atlantic bluefin tunas fished in the Mediterranean Sea reduced by half during the period - for example in Spanish waters average catch size in 1994 was 159 kg, whereas by 2009 it was only 77 kg. These declines have been interpreted as indicating the dying out of reproducing tunas, and if such trends were to continue this could lead to the wiping out of the entire spawning population as soon as 2012.

“I am shocked at the scale of the subsidies given to the bluefin fleet,” said Rueda. “This shows clearly the hypocrisy of the EU, which insists on the need to conserve fish stocks while simultaneously encouraging the rapid expansion of a fleet that was already too large.”

The European Commission’s response states that “the number of Community vessels licensed to fish for bluefin tuna in 2009 was 859 vessels or 52,553 Gross Tonnage (GT)”, a much larger capacity than the EU’s designated 2009 catch quota of 12,400 tonnes.

“It is a scandal that perverse EU subsidies have helped create a Frankenstein fleet continuing to aggressively target a collapsing species,” said Dr Sergi Tudela of WWF. “European citizens have given a gift of 34.5 millions Euros to the bluefin tuna industry which has resulted in the collapse of an ancient fishery, and what will happen next?"

“WWF strongly demands that no more EU public money be pumped into this business.”

Mismanagement of the bluefin fishery has fuelled moves to have international trade restrictions placed on Atlantic bluefin tuna at the forthcoming March meeting of parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Doha, Qatar.