The European Commission has given its backing for a suspension of international trade in the endangered Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna – following a celebrity letter calling on President Barroso to save the species from extinction.

The European Commission – led by Stavros Dimas, Commissioner for the Environment and Joe Borg, Commissioner for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs – agreed to propose to ministers that the EU backs Monaco’s proposal to list the bluefin on on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

The ban, which is hotly opposed by Japan and was also by Mr Borg’s officials, would ban all international trade of Atlantic bluefin tuna, and give the endangered species a chance of recovery. The Commissioners said this ban would be “temporary.”

EU countries will decide whether to confirm backing for the proposal on Sept 21. The EU will vote as usual as a bloc of 27 countries at the CITES meeting in Doha, Qatar in March next year.

Conservationists have warned that the bluefin’s spawning population would be wiped out by 2012 in the Mediterraneal and Eastern Atlantic without a ban on international trade for stocks to recover.

A petition by supporters of The End of the Line’s campaign to reform European fisheries was sent to President Barroso this week.

The original signatories, including the actors Greta Scacchi, Stephen Fry and Colin Firth, have been joined, among others, by Joanna Lumley, the French food writer Sophie Andrieu, the vineyard owner Baron Eric De Rothschild, the Italian actress Valeria Golino and the American narrator of The End of the Line, Ted Danson.