Article Summary:

The European Commission wants to eradicate the practice of shark finning completely from EU waters and fishing vessels from the EU wherever they operate in the world. In order to do this, they need 369 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to sign the Written Declaration (0071 /2010), launched by four MEPs, Chris Davies from the UK, Sirpa Pietikäinen from Finland, Daciana Octavia Sârbu from Romania and Jean-Paul Besset from France, which calls on the EU Commission to deliver a proposal to completely prohibit the removal of shark fins on-board vessels by the second anniversary of the Community Plan of Action for Sharks (February 2011). So far, only 329 MEPs have signed, and the Declaration will lapse unless complete on 20 December.

Project AWARE has published a list of MEPs and also lists whether they have as yet signed or not. For those of you living in Europe, please take the time to write to the MEPs from your country urging them to sign the Declaration. Template emails for MEPs are also available via the Project AWARE site.

The EU fishing fleets are responsible for one in three of the shark fins in trade in the world. This is a golden opportunity to stop this.