Great Greenland Furhouse 2009, the European Parliament voted in favour of an EU-wide ban on seal products, exemptions allowing limited seal product trade for Greenland Inuit. The majority of the fur products are headed for the European markets, with Denmark as the biggest customer. Since the EEC seal skin ban in 1983, the company receives between 25 and 30 million DKK (3.5 to 4 mil EUR) annually to support and develop Greenlandic seal hunt and production. There are currently 1,900 licensed professional hunters on Greenland, of these an estimated 200 to 300 are economically dependent on supplying seal skins to Great Greenland. On
Western European Union European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) within NATO structures. The ESDI was intended as a European 'pillar' within NATO, partly to allow European countries to act militarily where NATO wished not to, and partly to alleviate the United States' financial burden of maintaining military bases in Europe, which it had done since the Cold War. The Berlin agreement allowed European countries (through the WEU) to use NATO assets if it so wished. In 1998 the United Kingdom, which had traditionally opposed the introduction of European autonomous defence capacities, signed the Saint-Malo declaration. This marked a turning point as the declaration