Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 14 • Number 2 • 20th January 2010

Native Group Launches Legal Action over EU Seal Ban

Discuss this articleShare your views with other visitors, and read what they have to say

A coalition of native groups in Canada and Greenland is taking the EU to court over its controversial ban on seal product imports. The Inuit groups say the ban is not based on accurate information regarding conservation or animal welfare.

The coalition’s lawyer, Hendrik Viaene, says the documents were filed on 11 January at the Luxembourg-based European General Court, which deals largely with complaints about EU regulations.

While the EU ban has an exemption for “traditional hunting by indigenous communities which contribute to their subsistence,” the coalition says Inuit communities will still be affected. The seal products trade ban - which came into effect in September 2009 - has already led to a sharp drop in market prices. Aboriginal groups say this contraction has reduced opportunities in a part of the world already compromised by economic hardship. “Our communities depend on any economic initiative that is available to us,” said Mary Simon, president of the Canadian Inuit group.

Simon has been outspoken on the trade ban, arguing that it reflects a European lack of cultural understanding for aboriginal groups in the Far North. “It is bitterly ironic that the EU, which seems entirely at home with promoting massive levels of agri-business and the raising and slaughtering of animals in highly industrialised conditions, seeks to preach some kind of selective elevated morality to Inuit,” Simon said. “At best, this is cultural bias.”

Meanwhile, Inuit groups in Greenland say they do not want their way of life compromised by bureaucrats in Brussels. “They want to decide what kind of traditional hunting we do and who should be allowed to eat seal meat,” said Aqqaluk Lynge, president of Inuit Circumpolar Council in Greenland, adding that EU officials wanted the Inuit to live as they did 300 years ago.

The basis for the ban has been the subject of controversy and will be scrutinised when WTO consultations between Canada and the EU get underway. The EU will support its reason for the ban under Article XX of the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT), which provided the possible exceptions that allow a state to impede trade.

While an obvious exception to WTO rules regarding trade in animal products pertains to conservation measures, seal populations are not in danger and are, in fact, on the rise. This leaves Brussels with the rarely invoked “protection of public morals” GATT exception. The most recent use of the public morals clause was used by China in an attempt to gain control over the distribution of imported audiovisual material.

ICTSD Reporting; “Inuit take European Union to court over ban on imports of seal products,” THE CANADIAN PRESS, 15 January 2010; “Seal hunters face battle with EU over trade,” TIMES ONLINE, 18 January 2010.