Help the elephants! Public consultation on new EU measures to ban trade in ivory

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Wildlife

Help the elephants! Public consultation on new EU measures to ban trade in ivory

16 February 2021
News
On January 28th the European Commission published draft measures aimed to effectively ban EU trade in ivory.

The draft Commission regulation and guidance are now open for final public feedback before being adopted by the Commission. The period of public feedback will last until 25 February 2021.  

Across Europe, ivory continues to be traded online, in auction houses and markets. The EU and Japan are among the last countries with large, legal domestic ivory markets, while other major markets in the USA, China and the UK are now closed or in the process of closing. 

Luckily, there is wide support in the EU for the closure of domestic elephant ivory markets, from the EU Council to the European Parliament, and among EU citizens and civil society

Help the elephants and take part in the EC public consultationYou have time until February 25th!

The European Commission has the mandate to introduce comprehensive measures aimed at closing the EU domestic ivory market, thereby showing global leadership. Only by so doing, the EU will remove any financial value from ivory, reduce the opportunity for new ivory to be laundered through legal markets, and send a clear message to the rest of the world that the EU no longer considers ivory a commodity.

We therefore welcome the European Commission’s draft measures to ban the ivory trade in the European Union (EU) and urge the EU and its Member States to support and implement them without further delays.

We would nevertheless like to highlight the following recommendations for the European Commission’s public consultation:

  • We strongly recommend that the EC assess within the next few years the real effectiveness of both the implementing Regulation and the Guidance.
  •  We ask that the changes made to the guidance document on the EU regime governing trade in ivory is integrated into the EU Commission Regulation, in order to ensure that the guidance becomes legally binding and a consistent language in both the Guidance and the proposed Regulation is used.
  • We fully support the proposed measures which provide that antique worked ivory may only be traded within the EU with a certificate. However, only independent approved/recognised experts should be authorised to assess whether an item has been legally acquired or not in order to avoid conflict of interests.

Read more about Wildlife trade and trafficking.