• Date: Monday 9 June 2025
• Venue: FOAM, Place du Pin (10min walk from the Blue Zone)
• Arrival: from 16:30 Talks and Q&A: 17:00

Join ClientEarth, Seas At Risk and BirdLife Europe and Central Asia for this thought-provoking event to explore how proper funding allocation can help us achieve nature restoration targets and support a just transition in the fisheries sector. We will also discuss how the WTO agreement on fisheries subsidies can make a difference in this context.

A successfully-implemented transition of the fisheries sector would result in a brighter future for the environment, for current and future generations and for the economies of coastal communities.

Opening remarks :

• Juliet Stote Law and Policy Advsior, Marine Ecosystems, ClientEarth
• MEP Yon-Courtin - Vice-Chair of the PECH Committee and member of the SEArica intergroup
• MEP Germain – BUDG Committee and member of the SEArica intergroup

Panel Discussion :

• Juliet Stote Law and Policy Advsior, Marine Ecosystems, ClientEarth - Moderator
• Ken Kawahara – Low Impact Fishers of Europe (LIFE) / Ligneurs de la pointe de Bretagne
• Tristan Irschlinger – International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)
• Cyrielle Goldberg – BirdLife Europe and Central Asia
• Songlin Wang – Founder and President, Qingdao Marine Conservation Society

Closing remarks:

• Rémi Cossetti - Marine Policy Officer, Seas At Risk
• MEP Yon-Courtin - Vice-Chair of the PECH Committee and member of the SEArica intergroup
• MEP Germain – BUDG Committee and member of the SEArica intergroup

Join us to find out how this triple positive impact can be achieved.

Drinks and food will be provided. Guests will have the chance to ask questions to the panel and mingle with like-minded individuals. 

Programme for the evening:

• Arrival: from 16:30 
• Talks and Q&A: 17:00
• Networking, food and drinks 18:15pm

Interpretation in French and Spanish will be available

Speaker Bios
 

Rémi Cossetti is a Marine Policy Officer for Seas At Risk, focusing on the just transition to low impact fisheries and policy coherence at the Eu level. He has a background in public policy analyses in ecological transition and EU affairs, focusing on the link between diverse public policies and their impacts on biodiversity. His passion for the marine environment was sparked growing up in Marseille, by the Mediterranean.

Jean-Marc Germain is a Member of the European Parliament and the lead representative for the S&D group on budgetary matters. He is the permanent rapporteur on aid to Ukraine, on the budgets of the support fund for European defense industries, as well as on financial sanctions related to violations of the rule of law. He is also a member of the Committees on International Trade and Transport. An economist, member of the national executive of the Socialist Party (PS), and vice-president of the Socialist group in the Île-de-France regional council, he was deputy chief of staff to Martine Aubry when she was Minister of Employment and Solidarity, and between 2001 and 2002, advisor to Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

Cyrielle Goldberg

Cyrielle is a Marine Policy Officer at BirdLife Europe and Central Asia, the European division of BirdLife International — the world’s largest partnership dedicated to nature conservation, focusing on birds. She has a strong background in social sciences, environmental policy, and conservation, and brings expertise in EU marine policy. Over the past two years, her work has focused on European fisheries, offshore renewable energy, and the protection and restoration of marine ecosystems.

Tristan Irschlinger

Tristan Irschlinger is a Senior Policy Advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), where he leads the organization’s work on fisheries subsidies. His focus is on supporting the negotiation and implementation of multilateral rules to curb harmful fisheries subsidies within the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Tristan has extensive experience at the intersection of trade and sustainable development. Before joining IISD, he held positions at the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the WTO and EFTA.

Ken Kawahara

Ken is a fisheries engineer. He has worked previously for an NGO called Planète Mer, building citizen science projects with fishermen in order to improve the knowledge on data-poor species. After he joined two fishermen associations as general secretary : la Plateforme de la Petite Pêche artisanale française et l'association des ligneurs de la pointe de Bretagne, both members of LIFE, with the aim of defending both SSF and the marine environment on which they rely.

Stephanie Yon-Courtin

Stephanie Yon-Courtin is a Member of European Parliament since 2019, member of the Renew Europe Group and of the French political party Renaissance. Stéphanie YonCourtin is Renew coordinator of the committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, Vicechair of the committee on Fisheries (PECH) and member of the committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO). Stephanie Yon-Courtin’s main commitments at European level are the establishment of fair competition rules that are favourable to innovation and business development, as well as the protection of the consumers in the digital world. She was rapporteur on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR), the Solvency 2 review of the rules of the insurance market and the Retail Investment Strategy. Coming from Normandy coastal region, she is also deeply committed to fisheries and maritime issues, particularly ensuring the success of the European Ocean Pact and adapting EU fisheries policies to global challenges and regional specificities. She is also a member of the Delegation for the UE-Canada relations at the European Parliament. Stephanie Yon-Courtin is a former lawyer. She was admitted to the Paris Bar in 2004. Specialized in competition law, she has worked in international law firms (Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer, Allen & Overy LLP). Before that, she worked as a jurist for the European Commission. Between 2007 and 2011, she joined the French Competition Authority as an international affairs adviser to President Bruno Lasserre. Stephanie Yon-Courtin is also Regional Councillor of Normandy and she was mayor of SaintContest in Calvados until 2019. She holds a Master’s degree in law from the Universities of Caen and Bristol and a Master’s degree in European law from the University of Brussels.

Songlin Wang

王松林 

Songlin Wang has over 20 years of research and professional experience dedicated to the conservation of China’s coastal and marine ecosystems and the promotion of sustainable seafood production and consumption. From 2005 to 2018, he led key initiatives on sustainable seafood and marine conservation in China for The Nature Conservancy (TNC), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Paulson Institute, and Ocean Outcomes.

In 2017, he founded and now chairs the Qingdao Marine Conservation Society (QMCS), a professional Chinese NGO that convenes stakeholders across communities, civil society, industry, academia, and government to promote sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, and to restore vital marine habitats. QMCS’s China Seafood Sustainability Assessment program is helping catalyze a nationwide Responsible Seafood Movement in support of China’s Ecological Civilization and the UN SDGs.

Songlin holds a bachelor's degree in marine ecology from Ocean University of China and a master’s degree in environmental management from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. He is a 2021 Pew Marine Conservation Fellow, a member of Friends of Ocean Action, and currently serves on the Board of the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions.