Why did Kenya withdraw its proposal?

Kenya’s move was completely unexpected and took everyone by surprise, even Kenyan delegates. Officially, Kenya withdrew its proposal because it had not been vetted by the Ministry’s cabinet, but this inconsistent excuse for a text that had been prepared for months ahead of the meeting did not fly among negotiators. In fact, Kenya’s cabinet approval letter was seen by many delegates. The information soon broke among delegates that the European Commission had blackmailed Kenya at highest level over ‘blue economy’ aid money from the EU [1] to obtain Kenya’s withdrawal of the proposal on drifting FADs.

In our previous report [2], we had already highlighted the bullying of the EU (including on Kenya) to protect its French and Spanish industrial assets in the Indian Ocean. What happened this weekend in Mombasa shows that the EU has completely lost sight of its mandate to safeguard the environment and the health of marine life. “EU public authorities and industrial lobbies have merged into a unique body which, on top of damaging marine wildlife and ecosystems also harms developing economies in the Global South” said Frédéric Le Manach, BLOOM’s scientific director. “The posture of the EU is in blatant contradiction with the very philosophy of its development aid program. We wonder how negotiators can look at themselves in a mirror. They have no citizen mandate to act like they do.”

When the stakes make public authorities lose sight of ethics…

Drifting FADs are highly criticized for their hyper-efficiency and utter unselectivity, but they are central to the business model of European fleets — chiefly French and Spanish — targeting tuna in the region.

Three figures summarize the extent of the issue on d-FADS:

• EU tuna companies made 96% of their catches under d-FADs in 2018 in the Indian Ocean (where they are the single most important fishing actor)[3]; but
• 97% of yellowfin tuna (an overfished species) caught under d-FADs by European companies in the Indian Ocean between 2015 and 2019 were juveniles[4];
• 77% of the total bigeye tuna (another overfished species) juveniles caught in the Indian Ocean are from purse seine fisheries[5].

In other words, EU vessels depend on FADs, so any potential control on them is a direct threat to their harmful business model. Kenya’s initial proposal, with 11 other coastal states, requested to limit d-FADs to 150 units per fishing vessel, to phase out ‘supply vessels’ — i.e. vessels that do not catch fish but ‘manage’ huge FAD fleets for fishing vessels —, and to establish temporary three-month FAD closures annually [6].

Aware of the possible near-end of their unacceptable fishing model, the Spanish and French industrialists have been deploying maximum influence efforts to avoid the measures that they so dread. Tuna lobbies strategized long before the IOTC meeting with the French government to influence all processes threatening to impose environmental norms on them, such as the reform of the EU Control Regulation. This is also what explains the scandalous and possibly illegal appointment of the French public servant (Mrs Mattlet) who oversaw tuna fleets for the French government to the principal tuna lobbies ORTHONGEL and EUROPECHE. BLOOM and anti-corruption NGO ‘Anticor’ filed a complaint about this case to the French Public Prosecutor, who announced opening an inquiry in December 2022.

Mrs Mattlet was seen intensively lobbying the EU delegation all throughout the Mombasa meeting. She also openly fought the Indian proposal to ban FADs all year round[7].