EPP Group calls for more transparency of the Chinese fishing activities

The EPP Group calls for greater transparency on China's distant-water fleet and its fishing activities.

Today, the European Parliament adopted a report highlighting the problem that China has developed the largest distant-water fishing fleet and aquaculture industry, while at the same time having the world’s worst overall score for Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. These practices include, in some cases, inhumane working conditions on board fishing vessels.

The report stresses the need for China to take significant steps to combat IUU fishing practices and, in particular, calls on China to ratify the FAO Agreement on Port State Measures as soon as possible.

The report also calls for the protection of the European fishing industry from unfair trade practices. As China has considerably increased its tuna exports into the EU market through the autonomous tariff quotas, the text urges the Commission to ensure that the products benefiting from it do not come from IUU fishing.

"China is a very important country with which we must maintain close cooperation and frank bilateral dialogue on illegal fishing and ocean governance within the framework of the so-called Blue Partnership, signed in 2018. Multilateral cooperation with China is also necessary. Together with other influential nations such as the US, Japan or the UK, we must persuade China to commit to sustainable fishing and to fight illegal fishing,” explained the EPP Group negotiator of the Parliament's report, Francisco Millán Mon MEP.

The complex and sometimes arbitrary bureaucratic conditions imposed by the Chinese authorities on certain EU firms wishing to export fishery products to the country are also highlighted in the text. It urges the Commission to ensure that its fisheries policy towards China is consistent with all of its other policies.