Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung chairs the first meeting of the National Steering Committee on IUU (Photo: VGP)

The meeting chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung took place 4 months before the EU inspection team’s trip to Vietnam to check how Vietnam has implemented the EU recommendations to get the yellow card warning removed. Mr. Dung said fighting illegal fishing is a primary political task of the government, the Ministry of the Agriculture and Rural Development, and localities. He underlined the goal of ending Vietnamese fishermen’s encroachment into foreign waters, providing positioning devices to 31,000 fishing vessels by 2020, and strengthening fishing vessels’ data sharing between functional agencies for management and traceability. .

In the upcoming second round of inspection, the EU team will check Vietnam’s legal framework, the system of monitoring, supervising, and controlling fishing vessels, law enforcement, and tracing the origins of seafood.

In 2017, the European Commission issued a “yellow card” to Vietnam, warning that the country’s seafood exports could be banned unless Vietnam do more to tackle illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.