On the treatment of domestic pets in the European Union during the COVID-19 outbreak 

The petitioner shows his concern about an increase in the cases of dog abandonment during the quarantine decreed by the Spanish Government to slow the advance of COVID-19. Some people fear that their pets could spread the virus to them. This same situation would be replicating in other Member States. The petitioner states that, in countries struck particularly hard by COVID-19, such as China or Italy, animals have suffered the consequences of this widespread social panic. In China, they even went so far as to sacrifice their dogs by throwing them out the windows, while in Italy several organizations have denounced that there have already been more than 2,000 dog abandonments. In this dramatic context, some entities, as World Health Organization (WHO), remind that dogs cannot suffer from this disease or spread it, so they ask for calm from the population. For all the above, in the light of the tragedy experienced by all the countries of Europe, the petitioner would like to convey to the European Parliament the concern over this problem of the thousands of abandoned pets, all of which was aggravated in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. The petitioner thinks that the European institutions should develop community emergency strategies to deal with this problem while the coronavirus crisis lasts, promoting the opening of abandoned animal shelters, European public awareness campaigns in this regard. The petitioner believes that it would be necessary to create a specific European economic fund to respond to these emergencies, reinforcing the actions carried out by the Member States in this serious matter that also causes concern for many Europeans and associations for the defence of animal rights.