EUROPEAN COMMISSION Brussels, 15.4.2016 COM(2016) 207 final REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the operation of Council Regulation (EC) No 1185/2003 on the removal of fins of sharks on board vessels, as amended by Regulation (EU) No 605/2013, and on the international developments in this field



Report to the European Parliament and to the Council On the operation of Council Regulation (EC) No 1185/2003 on the removal of fins of sharks on board vessels, as amended by Regulation (EU) No 605/2013, and on the international developments in this field 1.Basis for this report Council Regulation (EC) 1185/2003 on the removal of fins of sharks on board vessels established a general prohibition of the practice of shark finning, i.e. the removal of a shark’s fins and the discarding of the remaining carcass at sea. Under this Regulation Member States could issue special fishing permits for the processing of sharks on board. To prevent finning, the Regulation established a so-called fin-to-carcass ratio for processed sharks. This Regulation was amended by Regulation (EU) 605/2013. Article 6 of the latter stipulates: “Where vessels flying the flag of a Member State catch, retain on-board, tranship or land sharks, the flag Member State […] shall send to the Commission, annually […] a comprehensive report on its implementation of this Regulation […]. After the submission […] of their second annual report […], the Commission shall, by 1 January 2016, report to the European Parliament and to the Council on the operation of this Regulation and the international developments in this field.” This report fulfils the reporting requirement. 2.Member States’ reporting Use of special fishing permits until 2013 Under Regulation (EC) 1185/2003, Member States that allowed the removal of fins from dead sharks on board had to report to the Commission the number of special permits they issued for this purpose each year. An overview of the permits issued by Member States that made use of this possibility under the old Regulation is presented in Table 1 and in Figure 1 in the Annex. Member States' reporting for 2013 and 2014 Where vessels flying the flag of a Member State catch, retain on-board, tranship or land sharks, each year the flag Member State has to submit a report to the Commission on its implementation of the Regulation during the previous year. This includes a description of its monitoring and enforcement of the compliance with the Regulation and, in particular, information on: the number of times sharks were landed, the number, date and place of the inspections, the number and nature of cases of non-compliance as well as the penalty applied, and the total landings by species (weight/number) and by port. Three coastal Member States – Croatia, Italy and Romania – did not submit any reports for either 2013 or 2014; several others only submitted a report on their implementation of the Regulation in either 2013 or 2014. An overview of the information reported by all Member States is given in Table 2 in the Annex; these reports are available online if the Member State concerned did not object the publication. In volume, seven Member States report landings of more than 50 tonnes in 2013, with two Member States standing out (Spain, with over 60,000 tonnes, and France, with over 15,000 tonnes). Half of the Member States that previously had issued special fishing permits to allow on-board processing of sharks did not report any catches of sharks by their fleets. Spain and Portugal have the highest ratios of volumes per landing (Table 3, Figure 2). For 2013 a breakdown of reported volumes by species and Member States is given in Table 4. Looking specifically at blue shark – a species for whose fins there is a market – the Spanish and Portuguese fleets have the largest shares in volumes (Figure 3).