European Parliament supports tuna

The European Parliament is supporting the trading ban on on blue fin tuna.

MEPs urged the European Commission and the EU Member States to ban international trade in blue fin tuna, adopting the resolution [1] by a show of hands. However they also included the following conditions:

• allowances for domestic trade and traditional coastal fishing
• EU financial support for the fishing industry
• tighter controls and tougher penalties to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing

The resolution comes ahead of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) [2], that takes place in Doha in March.