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Matthew Vella
An unsatisfied Stavros Dimas, the European Commissioner for the environment, has “made it clear” to Environment Minister George Pullicino that Malta must get its legislation on Spring hunting in line with EU law.
Meeting Dimas in Brussels on Thursday, Pullicino was told by the Commissioner that Malta’s hunting laws were not yet in line with European legislation.
The government also presented a report to justify the Spring hunting derogation. Hunting in Spring is banned in the EU, although countries can derogate from the law. Malta currently allows the shooting of quail and turtle dove in the Spring.
But a Commission spokesperson told MaltaToday the EU remains unconvinced of the figures of shot birds as communicated to the EU by the government.
“If only 10,000 birds are being shot, the Maltese must be really bad shooters,” a spokesperson for Dimas said.
The Maltese government is claiming that in 2004, some 2,128 quails and 10,111 turtle doves were shot in the month of May by over 16,000 registered hunters and trappers.
Both BirdLife Malta, and the Federation for Hunting and Conservation are sceptical of the figures. FKNK secretary Lino Farrugia said the figures were “on the low side”. BirdLife’s president Joe Mangion told the Times they are “incredible. They throw serious doubts on the reliability of the hunting bag data,” believing that as much 90,000 downed birds could have gone unaccounted for.
Malta has not yet transposed article 9 of the Birds Directive, which allows member states to derogate from the ban on Spring hunting. BirdLife claim this gives government no legal basis to derogate from the Birds Directive.
Malta’s derogation was however negotiated during its EU accession talks. Every year it will have to present a report to the Commission, to justify its derogation from the Directive, to keep the hunting season in Spring open.
BirdLife claims Malta’s justification report, which so far has been met with scepticism from Brussels, is not even valid without a proper legal transposition of the Directive into Maltese law.
In July it submitted a formal complaint to the Commission calling on Stavros Dimas to start infringement procedures against Malta.
In an official statement by the Department of Information, the environment ministry said it explained to Commissioner Dimas “the local realities of hunting and trapping”, but reported nothing of what Dimas had to say about Malta’s lagging behind in the transposition of the European regulations on hunting.
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
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