I read it and signed it, and it made me totally sick to my stomach, and I mean SICK SICK SICK. Being from Europe I am utterly ashamed for the EU's slack and unacceptable way of dealing with this.
On a good note though, a lot of the EU contries have very strict laws when it comes to animal cruelty, actually way harder than here. As I am most acustomed to the Swedish laws thats what I am here talking about, most fur is banned in sweden, the fur they buy has to be from animals farmed in a certain humane way, not saying that is always easy to make sure, since most of them are imported, because it is illegal to keep most of the "fur animals" there, it is seen as cruel.
So hopefully more contries than what have officially banned the cat and dog fur, have laws that prohibit the import and use, and now when it is out in daylight (I for one had not idea this was going on until 10 min ago) I am sure the public reactions in most European countries will put a stop to it. Mind you it says in the article that some of the new EU countries, and well they are mostly east europe or former sovjet countries and they just dont have the same kind of feelings for animals as we do in the west.
I signed and will do my bit by making sure the large animal rights group in Sweden, is working on this, and also try and find out what the actual situation is in Scandinavia.
Marit