Greek authorities have started collecting hundreds of thousands of dead fish that poured into a tourist port in the central city of Volos this week after being displaced from their usual freshwater habitats during flooding last year.

The floating carcasses created a silvery blanket across the port and a stench that alarmed residents and authorities who raced to scoop them up before the odour reached nearby restaurants and hotels.

GREEK-FLAGGED OIL TANKER ADRIFT AND ON FIRE AFTER SUSPECTED HOUTHI ATTACK

“It spans kilometers,” city council member Stelios Limnios told Reuters. “It’s not just along the coast, but also in the center of the Pagasetic Gulf,” he said, referring to the area offshore Volos whose coast is lined with holiday homes.

On Wednesday, trawlers dragged nets to collect the fish that were then dumped in the back of trucks. More than 40 tonnes have been collected in the last 24 hours, authorities said.

Volos mayor Achilleas Beos said the smell was unbearable. During a press conference on Wednesday he blamed the government for not dealing with the problem before it reached his city. He said that rotting fish could create an environmental disaster for other species in the area.

Experts said the problem was caused by historic floods last year that inundated Thessaly plane further north, including rivers and lakes. A net was not placed at the mouth of the river leading into Volos, they said. When the fish met the sea, the saltwater likely killed them.

“They didn’t do the obvious, to put a protective net,” mayor Beos said, referring to government services.

The environment ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Local prosecutors have ordered an investigation.

The disaster is the latest impact of extreme weather in Greece that scientists link to climate change, including higher temperatures and erratic rainfall that cause wildfires and flooding.

Dimosthenis Bakoyiannis, 33, who owns a beach restaurant 10 km (6 miles) from Volos, says his turnover dropped 80% this summer as fewer tourists wanted to visit after the flooding.

“Closing the barrier now doesn’t help,” he said. “Now it’s too late, the tourist season is over.”

The European Union’s foreign ministers on Thursday jointly rejected Nicolás Maduro’s claim to re-election in Venezuela, but stopped short of joining the US in recognising opponent Edmundo González Urrutia as the legitimate President-elect.

“We cannot accept the legitimacy of Maduro as the elected president,” the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said after an informal ministerial meeting in Brussels.

“He will remain president de facto, but we deny democratic legitimacy based on results that cannot be verified,” he added.

There was broad consensus among ministers to reject Maduro’s democratic legitimacy, but no such consensus to recognise the electoral victory of González Urrutia, who addressed the ministers by video earlier on Thursday, a diplomatic source confirmed.

The declaration comes a month after the highly contested July 28 presidential ballot in which Maduro was declared the winner, despite international concerns that the vote lacked transparency and claims from the opposition it has evidence the incumbent was defeated.

Protests continued in Venezuelan cities on Wednesday amid fears Maduro was tightening his grip on power and spurning international pressure to provide verified evidence of his claim to re-election.

Last week, Venezuela’s Supreme Court – known to be packed with Maduro’s loyalists – upheld the incumbent’s victory, prompting condemnation from several foreign governments in the West and Latin America.

The US has declared González the legitimate winner of the election, citing “overwhelming evidence.”

EU stops short of recognising González as election winner

The political opposition says it has voting tallies that testify that González won the vote by a landslide, prompting international calls for the Venezuelan authorities to publish a comprehensive breakdown of the national vote.

A United Nations panel of experts analysed a sample of the tallies published online by the opposition and found that they exhibited “all the security features of the original result protocols”. The Venezuelan government has rejected the tallies as forged.

Venezuelans vote using electronic machines that print a paper receipt. Those receipts are then deposited in a ballot box and are used to generate voting tallies, or “actas” that the Venezuelan authorities have so far refused to disclose.

Speaking in Brussels on Thursday, Spain’s foreign minister José Manuel Albares voiced concern that those voting tallies may never be made public.

“A significant amount of time has already passed and so we as 27 countries must face the likely situation that we will not be able to see these voting tallies, and neither will the opposition be able to analyse them,” Albares said.

Borrell echoed the Spanish minister’s concerns, accepting that Maduro would become Venezuela’s de facto leader.

Maduro has lashed out at foreign governments that have contested his victory. Speaking in Caracas on Tuesday, he launched a flurry of insults at Borrell, accusing him of “complicity” in the war in Gaza and of instigating an “open war against Russia from Ukraine.”

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Opposition asks EU to step up

Relations between the EU and Venezuela have frayed since the EU denounced Maduro’s 2018 re-election as unfree and unfair, prompting the bloc to introduce sanctions as part of international efforts to weaken Maduro’s grip on power.

The bloc recently said calls for new sanctions were “premature” as long as the political crisis persisted.

Nelson Dordelly Rosales, Special Advisor on EU Affairs for opposition group Plataforma Unitaria Democrática, told Euronews that while sanctions could be increased to up pressure on Maduro’s regime, the bloc also needs more creative solutions if it is to support the democratic movement in Venezuela.

“The European Union used to think out of the box and tried to use other tools in the diplomatic toolbox,” Dordelly said, adding that “financial” incentives could help propel a democratic transition in the country.

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“More than 70% of the population wants democratic change. So it’s important for the EU to listen to that and to do more than just simply adding a few names on the sanctions list.”