THE European Union is now a signatory to a regional fisheries management convention designed to ensure that fishing from Western Australia to South America is subject to agreed international rules.

The Convention on the Conservation and Management of High Seas Fishery Resources of the South Pacific Ocean was signed in Wellington on Monday, when senior New Zealand officials met their counterparts from the EU’s Directorate General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries.

The EU says that by establishing that the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) manages non-highly migratory fish species in the region, including deep sea fish stocks such as orange roughy, the Convention effectively bridges one of the few remaining governance gaps for high-seas fisheries.

The EU also underlines that New Zealand and the EU have many shared interests in the fisheries area, the EU being a very important, high-value market for New Zealand seafood. Moreover, both the EU and New Zealand are keen, they stress, to ensure that fish stocks are sustainably managed, especially through effective regional fisheries management organisations. The Wellington meeting also discussed trade issues and the problem of illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing.

The EU is the seventh party to sign the SPRFMO Convention (after Chile, Columbia, Cook Islands, Kingdom of Denmark in respect of Faroe Island, New Zealand and Peru) and the Commission has initiated the procedures for its ratification. New Zealand signed the SPRFMO Convention on 1 February.