To the EU Ministers’ Council for fishery

Subject: “Proposal for COUNCIL REGULATION establishing a management plan for fisheries exploiting stocks of plaice and sole in the North Sea”

Dear Madame/Sir

The Danish Society for a Living Sea hereby encourages You to strongly support the Danish Minister of Fishery, Mr. Hans Chr. Schmidt, in the efforts of the Danish government to limit the use of beam trawl in the catching of plaice and sole in the North Sea.

To the Danish press agencies Ritzau Bureau, Mr. Hans Chr. Schmidt on the 24^th of April states that he “wants a regulation against beam trawl”, but that he will “probably be standing quite isolated with this demand on the meeting of ministers on the 25^th of April, which is disappointing”.

We believe that countries like Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Luxembourg, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta and Greece also are very critical as to the employment of beam trawl. Therefore we encourage the EU Council of Ministers, together with Denmark, to come up with a significant limit of the the use of beam trawl, and as soon as possible pass new legislation to gradually reduce and terminate the use of beam trawl in the EU.

For more information, please contact:

Chairman of Living Sea

Kurt Bertelsen Christensen

+ 45 9789 4555 el. + 45 2048 7421

kbc@levende-hav.dk

www.levendehav.dk

Living Sea is an unpolitical Danish society, established in 1995, with the purpose of uniting interests around a more ecologically sustainable exploitation of the sea and its resources.