The parting shot

Hunters’ federation secretary Lino Farrugia is facing a lost battle as EU law starts a crescendo not even past allies like Alfred Sant are willing to stop. All the political will the Nationalist government had shown the hunters, has just run out

Some time before the Belgian Bird Protection Society was to start a viewing of their documentary “Malta – A Birdless Island” at the European Parliament, a filming of Malta’s hunting practices, an assistant from Nationalist MEP David Casa’s office in Brussels called hunters’ federation secretary Lino Farrugia to come up to Belgium.
“They called to ask me to come up there and stand up for Malta’s reputation. I told them they could defend Malta themselves,” Farrugia scoffs.
The chickens have finally come home to roost. For years a feared lobby, the hunters’ federation is today at the mercy of the Birds Directive, the European Union legislation which will ultimately ban hunting in spring, and has already made its mark felt with announcements that bird trapping will have to finally stop.
It comes as no surprise to Farrugia, who harped on endlessly in the run-up to the European Union accession referendum in 2003 that hunting would face an uncertain future. And yet, he says the hunters and trappers did not heed his warnings. “In short, their allegiance to the political parties is greater than their passion for the sport,” he laments.
Despite endless reassurances from Nationalist ministers, everything is slowly coming to an end for Malta’s hunters and trappers. Earlier this week, the government announced it intended to prohibit the trapping of finches in spring and shorten the season for hunting from sea craft by a month. The announcements came after a formal letter from Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas informed minister George Pullicino that trapping would have to definitely stop by 2008.
And yet, Farrugia says, all along the hunters were being told that nothing of the sort would happen. Instead, the first clampdown on Malta’s hunting tradition is starting in earnest. Finch trapping, currently allowed between October 1 and April 10, would be restricted to between October and the end of January. Some 5,000 trappers, who had been already restricted from trapping finches back in 1993 by parliamentary secretary Stanley Zammit, have now come back to square one, this time by EU decree.
Hunting at sea will also be curbed by a month, preventing hunters from shooting greater numbers of ducks passing over Maltese waters on their way to breeding grounds in the north.
But for months after Malta’s accession to the EU, the Commission had received numerous protests from individuals and organisations on hunting and trapping. An EU delegation visited Malta in April, and informed the government it will have to keep on implementing the Birds Directive and transpose it into Maltese law. More foreign voices joined the fray on Malta’s ruthless hunting record.
But Farrugia denies that hunters have jeopardised their own future. “I am irked about the way this was done by the government. We had met minister Pullicino some time ago to offer our assistance, provide information and data which the government doesn’t have – data on bird statistics, on what is actually hunted. But the government didn’t take up the offer. So it never had the political will to keep hunting alive, but instead it ceded to the pressure from the European Commission. Instead of admitting it wasn’t capable of negotiating a good package, it accuses hunters of having jeopardised its sport. This is not true. This has happened because the Commission has dictated these laws. What happened here is pretty much the government being soft and bowing to the European Union.
“Look, I am not condoning any illegality. There are enforcement authorities to take care of this. But illegal hunting takes place anywhere. I am not justifying it. Illegality has to be counter-acted. There isn’t enough enforcement. There is also a problem of discipline – if you need a hunting or trapping licence you need to be a member of an organisation. Today there is more than one organisation. If we ban a member for breaking the law, he will easily go with another organisation.
“Even the Administrative Law Enforcement unit is acting on petty offences, taking on hunters who had, say four cartridges in their rifle instead of three. But when there are reports on obscenities, they do not act, because of all the nepotism on this island. I would never dream of abusing the law, because I don’t have a minister who is going to stand up for me. The ALE is not acting where it should be acting. This was the same criticism we brought up with the Police Commissioner in a meeting.”
Farrugia talks about the derogation from the Birds Directive, which allows member states to keep on hunting in spring, as long as their derogation from the law is justified with the European Commission’s Ornis committee. It is one of the most treacherously technical affairs in EU legislation. But Farrugia says the government never had the political will to truly safeguard hunting. First, he says, there were the reassurances.
“I can quote you a million words, from Eddie Fenech Adami to other government ministers, who gave us certainties that after EU accession trapping would remain as it is, that whoever says whatever, trapping would stay as it is. I can give you quotes by Fenech Adami, by Joe Borg, today an EU commissioner, by Richard Cachia Caruana, and even Jason Azzopardi, who in Haz-Zebbug said the government got a guarantee forever. He almost insulted his audience to explain what a derogation was. Or in Rabat, when I asked Tony Abela about the speed limit on the sea and he said it was not true.”
Of course, Farrugia was already well aware of the legislation that would curb hunting. Along the line, hunters were told they must have stood the chance to justify their derogation from the Birds Directive, and that hunting and trapping would continue unabated.
Then he decided to contest the European Parliament elections in 2004, when with some 3,000 plus first preference votes, confirmed that the hunters had been taken on board by the political parties. The federation had some 14,000 members alone.
“That’s because they care about the party more than the sport. We warned them about what would happen when I contested the elections.”
Exposing the lobby’s weakness in the face of a trying situation, Farrugia accepts the fact that hunters today are somewhat powerless. “I never expected to be elected, but if the hunters and trappers wanted we could have manifested our force. But unfortunately, and even with great political opposition from both political parties, especially the Malta Labour Party, there were those who did not want to believe me. They called me a liar, that we were inventing things, that we wanted to damage the government. They said that government would not be mad enough to curb hunting.
“Now everyone is coming over to me, asking me what we are going to do. I told them ‘what are you asking me now for? It’s too late.’ A Nationalist came to me to tell me what the federation was going to do about the new laws. I told him to go ask Simon Busuttil what he was going to do about the matter.”
And now the hunters face an Alfred Sant who has swung over to the ‘EU side’. After having first given hunters a boost in 1996 by overturning Stanley Zammit’s reforms, one of the many landmarks in a 15-year history where hunting dominated the political agenda and lured parties into acquiescing to their request, Alfred Sant says a future Labour government will follow the contractual agreements the Nationalist government negotiated with the EU.
“The government is basically following what it negotiated,” Sant told the Times. “We had warned before the election that what the Nationalist Party was promising could not materialise. Irrespective of whether one agrees with hunting or trapping, one has to admit that hunters and trappers have been deceived.
“I am not surprised at what Sant said,” Farrugia says, “because the MLP, after spending ten years saying how bad EU accession was, look resigned to accept what the EU will say. What I am disappointed about is that Alfred Sant says there’s nothing to do, and that they will respect what the EU says on this matter. Because now we are back to the 1993 laws, when we did what we could and finally managed to clinch a deal with Labour to revert the laws in 1996. So are Labour’s principles no longer what they used to be?”
Of course this is full circle for Lino Farrugia. He freely acknowledges saying the hunters’ federation always ‘used’ the party which would accommodate them the most. This time, both the Nationalists and Labour are feasting on their innards. Hunters are on their own. So much so, that even Farrugia is warning other hunters not to break the law.
“I am an enthusiast as much as the others are. First they did not listen to me, and now I am about to lose from the decisions they made in the first place. I tell you this: there are a lot of bullies out there who are gong to say they don’t give a toss about the new law and that they are still going to trap birds. But if I cannot trap birds, they certainly won’t, because I will report them to the authorities if they do.”
Finding it hard to reason with the hunters themselves, Farrugia admits they carry with them an image problem, which he says has been augmented by media sensationalism on the subject.
But then again, hunters are on the losing end with a government which he says has shown little willingness to cooperate with them. “There are ways and means the government could have implemented the EU law, by using the derogation itself. This was the basis on which we have been offering our assistance to the government, but they didn’t accept.
“Not even the Ornis committee was consulted on the new laws. The minister is supposed to discuss with us any upcoming changes in the law. So I don’t see any other function for our Ornis committee anymore. But there’s just no will to cooperate with us. The minister even met up with the European federation, FACE, to ask for information on hunting and trapping in Malta which we could have easily given them. But he met them because he didn’t want to meet us. He is obviously trying not to give us importance.”
Farrugia even spoke to Malta’s MEPs, asking them to form part of an inter-group of MEPs on hunting and biodiversity, asking even David Casa, whose assistant had called him to defend Malta’s reputation at the screening of the Belgian Bird Protection Society’s documentary on hunting in Malta.
Joseph Muscat, Louis Grech and Simon Busuttil declined the invitation to form part of the group. “Simon Busuttil had voted for the reconstitution of the group after 2004, but said he would have nothing to do with the subject. We also met Louis Grech, who told us he was not thinking of joining the group. John Attard Montalto and David Casa did not even answer us.”
That leaves Maltese hunters with no friends in Brussels, and their Maltese sympathisers seem to have migrated for good.