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Matthew Vella
Nicholas Hanley, the head of the EU’s Biodiversity Unit, sounds unsure about the figures depicting the number of trapping licences issued in Malta before the islands joined the EU.
The most contentious are the 2003 figures for trapping, which should have indicated the start of a natural decline in licences after the Maltese committed themselves to the EU in December 2002, at the end of accession negotiations, to freeze trapping licences.
Instead, by the end of 2003 trapping licences increased by some 345, just ahead of EU accession. It did against a written commitment that it would not.
Hanley knows there are problems at hand, although his statements to the press during his recent visit was that “the picture sometimes painted by the press is not quite as bad as it appears to be on the ground.” The fact that his ‘surprise’ visit was pre-announced may have had something to do with the hunting inactivity he witnessed throughout his tour.
One of these problems is hunting at sea – and how the police force is finding it unable to catch up with fast powerboats that breach the maximum EU limit of 18km/h on the open sea.
Already he has to take stock of the fact that in 2003, when the Maltese should have effectively stopped issuing licences for the trapping birds, the number instead increased.
“My understanding was that from 2003 and after, there would be no new licenses issued, and from my recent meeting I have been informed that last year and this year there has been a continuing drop,” Hanley states, however adding: “I see from your figures that between 2002 and 2003 there was a regularisation of licenses.”
The ‘regularisation of licences’, allegedly the spate of unregistered trappers who were allowed to legitimise their status by the Minister of Justice and Home Affairs in the run-up to EU accession, somewhat betrays Malta’s commitment to the EU Commission.
Maybe the ministry understood that its commitment only started after the signing of the treaty in mid-2003, of even after accession in May 2004. What is sure is that 2003 was the year of reckoning for all the unregistered Maltese and Gozitan trappers who were illegal hunters.
Hanley dismisses the fact as “history”, brushing off the figures as the government’s attempt at getting its act together:
“That there may have been, between 2002 and 2003, a regularisation of licences was left rather fluid. And that was clearly an attempt to get a handle on the whole operation and see the scale of what they had to do. What had to be said is that this was before signing the Accession Treaty.”
At least he admits that the commitment the Maltese have taken to stop trapping by 2008 “makes it a bigger problem by issuing more licences. My understanding was that from 2003 onwards no new licenses would be issued.”
However Hanley is unsure about when this was exactly expected to happen. “I don’t know when this period exactly is, whether at the start of 2003 or after. My understanding was that after 2003 no new licences would be issued after the trapping season, and I have seen from the figures you sent me and was told verbally by the Ornis chairman that there has been a decline in numbers because there is a certain natural decline given that the average age of trappers is 50.”
Hanley now says that what Brussels is looking at is to focus on how the Maltese will respect the timetable set out in the Treaty. “The political deal was five years maximum. I have reminded the Minister and the Ornis committee that they had an obligation to report on their progress and we have great expectations that they would have more to say about implementation. What we can say to the Maltese is whether they are carrying out or not what is carried in the Accession Treaty, and in the Treaty there is the commitment to phase these licenses out within five years.”
One of the things Hanley’s team is in fact looking into is whether the Maltese have correctly transposed EU legislation on hunting and trapping.
A key area is the question of hunting at sea – according to EU law, hunting at sea cannot take place on boats driven at a speed exceeding five kilometres per hour, or at a maximum speed of 18km/h on open sea.
Hanley is aware of the problems the Maltese police force face with sea hunters whose motorboats are equipped with engines of far greater speeds. He asks whether the Birds Directive has been properly transposed in Maltese legislation:
“That is what my lawyers are checking with the authorities, and how has this been effectively enforced. So is Maltese law in accordance with the Directive? It may not be, not only on hunting at sea. We are not convinced that the law on Spring hunting is in conformity and it has to be revised,” he said.
“Obviously you don’t have policemen in boats everywhere. But boats can be given authorisation for hunting only if their maximum speed is 18km/h. Even if in terms of enforcement these boats are too fast to catch up with, there must be a system for authorising boats according to their speed.
“And this is something we are not convinced was properly implemented in Maltese legislation. We were given to understand from NGOs that this is a problem, and that speedboats were being used to chase flocks of seabirds, in an unfair form of hunting. This is what we are talking about: are we talking about hunters using their skill or doing something else?”
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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