The first task for the environmentalist NGOs in Sorrento is, of course, to determine whether the Czech Republic has found its way to Italy.

The small, land-locked country spontaneously became concerned about whale populations at the same time that Greenpeace launched its Central European fundraising drive. The new-found Czech disquiet about whale populations also came at a time when environmentalists in neighboring Austria were campaigning against the commissioning of a Russian-built nuclear reactor at Temelin.

In April 2003, Eugene Lapointe, President of IWMC, cautioned the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia against joining the IWC unless they are fully committed to abide by its rules and promote the use of science in determining whale quotas.

This warning was partially heeded. However, the government of the Czech Republic has indicated that it will follow Greenpeace’s lead and join the IWC. It has come to the view that the whale needs to be saved by a whaling ban, twenty-five years after western nations succumbed to the same false but lucrative claim.

As reported by IWMC last year, the Greenpeace campaign in Central Europe has focused on race, with Greenpeace wrongly portraying Japan as a maverick whaling nation defying international law. Whaling by other nations such as Norway, Iceland, Denmark (Greenland), Russia and the USA has been largely ignored.

In the 1980s Greenpeace recruited around a dozen countries to join the IWC in order to gain the three-quarters majority necessary to establish a moratorium on commercial whaling. In some cases, Greenpeace paid membership fees. It is not clear whether any money has changed hands on this occasion.