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Greenpeace blocks EU fish talks with seven-ton protest

Dec 17, 2007, 11:54 GMT

Brussels - Environmental pressure group Greenpeace took its blockading tactics to a new level Monday as activists closed off the European Union's headquarters with a seven-ton wall of concrete blocks. The protest was aimed at EU fisheries ministers, who are meeting this week to set quotas for fishing fleets across Europe. 'We have closed the Council of Ministers building... We are calling for the suspension of negotiations on fish quotas until a better governance is in place and until fish stocks can recover,' Greenpeace marine-affairs policy director Saskia Richartz told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. Some 200 Greenpeace activists from 14 EU states, armed with banners, fencing material, cement and seven tons of breeze-blocks, turned up at the EU Council of Ministers shortly before dawn to launch the most concrete protest Brussels has seen in years. After politely informing internal security guards that they were engaged in a non-violent protest, they proceeded to build a wall nine courses (two metres) high and some 20 metres wide, complete with supportive buttresses, across the building's front door. They then daubed the wall with the slogan, 'Shut down until fish stocks recover,' while colleagues blockaded the building's back entries with fencing and a human chain. The building operation took just half an hour, Richartz said. The activists then lay down at the foot of their wall and waited for police to drag them away. Meanwhile, fisheries ministers managed to enter the building through a back door, sources inside the siege said. The protest was aimed at the annual EU fisheries council, which sets fishing quotas for all EU waters. Environmentalists have regularly accused the council of ignoring scientific advice and setting catch limits which cannot be sustained. But ministers argue that if they set the quotas any lower, coastal communities will no longer be able to make a living. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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Sunshine boyDec 17th, 2007 - 14:18:24

The EU fisheries policy is probably the most useless document on earth.
When they have a policy that makes fishermen throw dead fish back into the sea because they are too small [presumably a miracle will happen and they will revive] and also throws good [and also dead] fish back into the sea because they are not the fish they were fishing for leads one to believe that the politicians and scientists that think out these policies are totally incompitant.
Just like the rest of the EU.

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