The Australian Government has announced it will take legal action against Japanese whaling activities at the International Court of Justice in an official press statement released last week.

Japan flouts whaling ban

Australia accuses Japan of shamelessly flouting the 1986 global moratorium on commercial whaling through its “scientific” whaling program in the Southern Ocean, which is also the site of a protected Whale Sanctuary under International Whaling Committee (IWC) rules.

EU sits on the fence

The announcement has highlighted the EU’s lack of any clear position on commercial whaling and resulted in some to call for Europe to stand up and support Australia.

“Now it is the turn of the European Union to take a clear position against whaling and publicly stand behind Australia and its strong efforts to bring and end to commercial and scientific whaling”, said Chris Butler-Stroud, chief executive of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS).
“Europe’s citizens have strong views against whaling, as do many governments of the EU Member States, but the European Union, as a block, has failed to stand strong against whaling in the past months. This is appalling.”

The IWC proposal suggesting all current whaling activities be allowed to commence for the next 10 years, was labelled by the WDCS as a “whalers charter”, and received strong criticism from Australia. As of yet the EU has not issued a formal response to the proposal.

“Europe, it is clearly now time for you to step up and also clearly oppose commercial whaling”, says Butler-Stroud.