Greenpeace ‘blocks’ fish talks

GREENPEACE says fisheries ministers, who began their annual three-day meeting in Brussels to decide the fish take for the coming year, should close most fisheries.

To make their point, they shut down the huge council building where ministers from the 27 member states normally meet to decide such issues, and put up a huge banner reading “Shut down until Fish Stocks Recover”.

About 200 activists, wearing bright yellow windcheaters, yesterday morning drove up to the big pink building in vans and lorries and began unloading concrete blocks, cement and huge yellow signs.

They quickly constructed block walls about 20 metres long and two metres high across the entrance normally used by the workers and the media and a separate entrance where ministerial cars drive up to.

Huge fishing nets blocked other entrances to the building.

The Belgian police however arrived before the cement had time to harden and they dismantled the wall and arrested several of the protesters in time to clear the way for the ministers’ arrival.

But Greenpeace was unrepentant. Its EU marine policy advisor Saskia Richartz said: “The Fisheries Council has been an utter disaster for fisheries. Unless changes are made and power is ceded to Europe’s Environment Ministers, Europe’s fisheries face a biodiversity and economic collapse.”

The European Commission and the scientists say that 80% of fish stocks are outside known safe biological limits.

The commission says that catches between 2003 and 2007 were set on average around 50% above the scientifically recommended level.

The European Environment Agency reports that between 22% and 53% of the assessed, commercially fished stocks in the NE Atlantic are outside safe limits.

According to Greenpeace, these figures mask declines such as about 90% in large predatory fish like tuna, swordfish and cod.