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Sunday 05.02.2012

Seal ban a go

European parliamentarians voted May 5 in favour of on a ban of seal products. The ban offers narrow exemptions for Inuit communities from Canada and Greenland to continue their traditional hunts but bars them from large-scale trading of pelts, oils or meats in Europe. Canada and Norway say they will challenge the ban at the World Trade Organization.

The European Parliament voted Tuesday for a strong Regulation that will eliminate the placing of seal products on the European Union market, closing a primary market for Canada's commercial seal hunt.



The Council and Commission had already agreed to the text, making Tuesday's plenary vote the final step in achieving the regulation.

In light of the overwhelming vote in favour of the agreed upon regulation by the Parliament, the regulation will go into effect in 2010.

The EU has been a primary market for the Canadian sealing industry, accounting for about one-third of reported seal skin exports. Globally, the EU accounts for one-quarter of the world trade in seal products.

In recent years, 11 countries have banned their trade in seal products or announced their intentions to do so. They join the United States, which prohibited seal product trade in 1972.

The wording of the ban calls the annual hunt of harp and hooded seals "cruel."

An earlier draft would have left the door open for exemptions to countries that could certify their hunting methods are humane, leading Canada to institute new rules to ensure every seal is killed quickly and painlessly.

National Inuit leader Mary Simon expects Prime Minister Stephen Harper to follow through with Canada's stated commitments to take WTO action against the European Union now that the EU Parliament has in fact voted to proceed with a ban on the import of seal products into the European Union countries.

"Inuit are devastated at today's vote," Simon said. "Our economies had rebuilt themselves and we fought to make sure that this day would not visit us once again-to avoid the tragic situation of the 1980s. This will cause more despair among our Inuit youth. The stated exemption in the legislation will not help us as the markets will once again be effectively destroyed. As Inuit leaders have stated across the Arctic, once you destroy a market for one group, it is destroyed for all."

Simon said today's vote flies in the face of legal advice from the European Union's own lawyers which advised EU Parliamentarians that the proposed ban would not be legal under either EU law or under international trade law, and could easily be challenged at the WTO. ITK obtained a copy of this opinion. "It is astonishing that, while the European Union is founded on the rule of law, it is prepared to ignore the constraints of law when it is politically expedient. Inuit expected better," said Simon.

Simon further noted that the EU's action could only raise additional questions surrounding the credibility of the EU's announced hopes to play a more active role in Arctic affairs that would give appropriate weight to the rights and circumstances of Arctic indigenous peoples. "The EU's harsh actions are speaking louder than its soft words." said Simon.