Charles Clover, The Telegraph 18 Mar 08
France has been told by the European Court that it may not allow fishing with "wall of death" nets in the Mediterranean this year.
The court has refused to grant the French Government a temporary exemption to allow fishermen attempting to catch endangered bluefin tuna and swordfish to go on using drift nets that were prohibited in the EU in 2002.
The fleet of 92 vessels was discovered by the environmental group Oceana operating in the Mediterranean last year, using "wall of death" nets between three and six miles long.
Drift nets more than 1.5 miles long were banned by the UN in international waters in the early 1990s and drift nets of any length in 2002 because of global concerns about the bycatch of dolphins, turtles and sharks.
The French government, however, granted a legal exemption to its fishermen in the Mediterranean arguing that their nets did not fit the definition of drift net because they were anchored - though environmentalists reported that this was seldom the case.
In 2007, however, these legal loopholes were eliminated when the EU approved a legal definition of a drift net.
Oceana complained to the European Commission that both Italy and France were continuing to use illegal fishing gear to capture bluefin tuna and swordfish, years after the EU ban entered into force.
The bluefin tuna population in the Mediterranean is thought by scientists to be on the verge of collapse and the swordfish is considered significantly overfished.
The French government has been enforcing the ban while trying to agree the temporary extension. France could now be penalised for allowing the use of drift nets since 2002.
Xavier Pastor, executive director of Oceana in Europe, said: "This decision is a very important step to eliminate driftnets from the Mediterranean. The ruling also mentions the fact that these nets have been banned for the capture of threatened species since 2002, and not only since the 2007 EU agreement on a driftnet definition, as the French government has always claimed.
"This corroborates Oceana's long-held stance: French driftnets have been illegal since the ban entered into force, although the French government has protected them with decrees and special fishing permits".
