Isabella Lövin to discuss illegal fishing at UN fisheries meeting

Next week, Isabella Lövin attends a UN meeting in Rome where one of the points on the agenda is how to stop illegal fishing.

COFI (Committee on Fisheries) is a subsidiary body of FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and convenes 31 January – 4 February.

Isabella Lövin goes to Rome to participate in the discussions on methods to combat illegal fishing. The COFI meeting is relevant to her upcoming report on the role of the EU in combating illegal fishing at the global level. The European Commission estimates that the EU alone imports 1,1 billion Euros of illegal fish every year.

The UN is currently working on establishing a global register of vessels. There are already registers that list approved vessels and blacklist vessels that have been caught fishing illegally, but these registers are regional and incomplete. It is therefore difficult to trace catches to see if they come from vessels that follow the rules.

At COFI’s website, you can find more information about what’s happening at the meeting.

/Axel Naver, press officer