MEPs Can Make History
29th April 2009
In Strasbourg last Wednesday evening, 22nd April, the Parliament's negotiating delegation, led by Arlene McCarthy, and the Czech Presidency of the Council of Ministers agreed on the main lines of a historic package. When this is adopted, the resultant regulation will spell the end of trade in seal products in the EU once and for all.
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Make history! Please. © Mark Glover/HSI |
Parliament and Council did this with the help of the European Commission in so-called "trilogue" talks. The outcome was screened a few days later in Brussels by the Council's Committee of Permanent Representatives to the EU on Friday 24th April. The 27 Ambassadors endorsed the deal.
Now Up to MEPs
Now it is up to MEPs to agree in meetings of their respective political groups in Brussels this week that they will make history in Strasbourg in early May. They can do so by adopting the compromise package in a single reading before the European elections and thereby guarantee that a ban on trade in seal products in the EU is passed.
All the institutions now agree that the trade in the EU in products issuing from commercial seal slaughter should be banned with no loopholes. However, the trilogue talks were crucial because they resolved the outstanding issues of detail to ensure that the Regulation could finally be passed. It was vital to ensure that, once adopted and implemented, the new legislation would be in line with the rules of the World Trade Organisation. Some very limited and precisely worded exemptions were also required to ensure that traditional Inuit communities could continue subsistence hunting. Finally, it was also necessary to find language that would not interfere with some national rules relating to small-scale control of seal populations.
In Brussels this week, MEPs will be facing up to the fact that the onus is now on them to do the right thing in the final plenary session of this legislature. Most political groups are unanimous, it seems, in supporting the total ban on trade in seal products, although questions remain over the positions of some sections of both the European People's Party and the Liberal Democrats group.
425 MEPs Signed Written Declaration
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| Stop the trade. End the cruelty. © HSI/Kathy Milani |
It is worthwhile remembering that the proposal to ban trade in seal products in the EU put forward by the Commission last year, came about as a direct result of the Written Declaration signed by a staggering 425 MEPs from all groups in 2006. This Declaration called for an end to the trade in seal products so as to stop the terrible cruelty involved in the commercial slaughter of seals in countries such as Canada, Namibia and Greenland.
The Declaration and subsequent proposal for a regulation is evidence not only of the widespread outrage at the trade in cruelty but also of the power and influence of the European Parliament in setting the agenda at the EU level. While all credit is due to the EU Member States for rejecting the flawed exemption for so-called "humane slaughter" of seals (a theoretical concept, impossible to achieve in practice on the ice floes), it was Parliament's Environment and Internal Market committees that took the lead.
So it is highly desirable that the Parliament adopt the package with a massive majority to send a clear signal to the whole world.
Next week in Strasbourg, Europe's voters and the world's media will focus on the EU's MEPs. It is time to make history: Stop the trade and end the cruelty.
