Europe\u2019s favourite fish is at the heart of a fresh fight over how it\u2019s caught.<\/p>\n
The EU\u2019s top court recently ruled<\/a> that the European Commission failed to properly assess a complaint by French NGO BLOOM over its opposition in 2023 to banning fish aggregating devices (FADs) in the Indian Ocean. The ruling forces the EU executive to defend its stance \u2013\u00a0a position backed by the industry, which says the proposed ban was intended to block European vessels from those waters.<\/p>\n FADs are floating objects with ropes or nets hanging beneath them to attract fish, which allows crews to encircle the fish with large \u201cpurse seine\u201d nets and haul them aboard. This method is widely used by the EU\u2019s long-distance tuna fleet, particularly by French and Spanish vessels, but environmentalists claim that it kills turtles, sharks, and rays, and can wash up on beaches or damage coral reefs.<\/p>\n \nBLOOM\u2019s scientific director, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Le Manach, called the judgment “a moment for clarification\u201d following years of campaigning and said he hopes the Commission will change its position at upcoming meetings of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC).\n<\/p>\n \nTuna is the most consumed fish species in the EU, most of it canned, yet around 70% is imported. Much of the EU\u2019s own Indian Ocean catch is processed in countries such as the Seychelles before entering the European market.\n<\/p>\n Industry pushback \nWhen a partial FAD ban was proposed at the IOTC in 2023, Europ\u00eache criticised<\/a> it as an attempt to force EU vessels, as well as those from Seychelles, Mauritius, Oman, Tanzania and Korea, out of those waters. The group argued that none of the ban’s backers used FADs themselves.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201c[It] was not only unfair, but also operationally unworkable,\u201d Mattlet told Euractiv. She applauded the new FAD rules<\/a> adopted by the IOTC in 2024, which include certain restrictions but not an outright ban.\n<\/p>\n \nMattlet said that the industry is moving towards non-entangling gear and played down claims of widespread bycatch. \u201cSmart\u201d buoys anchored to many FADs can also help reduce accidental captures by using echo-sounders to identify species, she added.\n<\/p>\n \nIn response to accusations of overfishing, Mattlet noted that all major tropical tuna species in the IOTC now have specific\u00a0catch limits<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n Ongoing fight \n\u201cThe EU industry should look into alternative ways of fishing,\u201d said Le Manach, highlighting \u201cfree school\u201d fishing, where vessels track tuna along their natural migratory routes and deploy nets in open water instead of surrounding them with FADs.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cEuropeche keeps complaining that there is a plot against the EU industry to expel them from everywhere but this is the usual trumpist rhetoric”.\n<\/p>\n The Commission has until late September to appeal against the court\u2019s ruling. BLOOM has also sued France over its seat at the IOTC, with a verdict pending in Paris.<\/p>\n The feud between Europ\u00eache and BLOOM stretches back years, with the industry accusing<\/a> the NGO of owing EU institutions money and claiming its president profited from representing fossil fuel giants \u2013 allegations BLOOM strongly denies<\/a>.<\/p>\n (de)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Europe\u2019s favourite fish is at the heart of a fresh fight over how it\u2019s caught. The EU\u2019s top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-75868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe tuna sector played down the ruling. \u201cThe court\u2019s decision only concerns an internal procedural matter of the European Commission,\u201d said Anne-France Mattlet, director of Europ\u00eache\u2019s tuna group. She defended purse-seine fishing as sustainable and praised EU fishing rules, which also apply abroad, as the toughest in the world.<\/p>\n
\nBloom remains unconvinced.<\/p>\n