[WATCH] Commissioner Vella says temporary ban on finch trapping ‘not decided’

Commissioner Vella says temporary ban on finch trapping ‘not decided’

Environment commissioner Karmenu Vella said that the implementation of interim measures to prevent finch trapping while the European Court of Justice decides whether or not Malta was breaching its derogation rights in finch trapping, was still undecided.

The European Commission has officially referred Malta to the EU Court of Justice over its refusal to stop finch trapping, a practice that the Labour government introduced after it was phased out and finally banned in 2009.

Trapping of finches is prohibited by the EU although member states may derogate from the ban is no other satisfactory solution, and if the derogation is used “judiciously, with small numbers and strict supervision.”

Speaking at the end of a joint dialogue with Commissioner for regional policy Carina Cretu, Vella said the problem was that the European Commission felt that the government did not meet the necessary criteria to have the derogation, but that the government insisted otherwise.

“The reason why this case has been taken to court is that we need a referee to determine who is right,” Vella explained.

Vella further added that it was as yet unknown whether the Maltese government will continue to insist upon the practise of finch trapping or not.

Asked whether he would be pushing for the use of interim measures to effectively ban finch trapping while the court made its decision, Vella said that he couldn’t commit to anything yet.

“Interim measures are normally implemented when irrevocable ecological damages are resulting from the practise,” Vella said, adding that he wasn’t sure that finch trapping amounted to such conditions.

Bird Life Malta has urged the commission to impose such measures

“If they do not apply an interim suspension, finch trapping will begin again in less than a month with thousands of birds needlessly caught from the wild,” BirdLife conservation manager Nicholas Barbara told MaltaToday in a previous interview.

This is the second time Malta is taken to the EU Court for flouting environmental laws: the first time was over its insistence on opening the spring hunting season.

Malta was allowed a transitional arrangement in the EU Accession Treaty to phase out finch trapping, taking into account the time required to establish a captive breeding programme. The transitional arrangement expired in 2008, and after that trapping was banned.

However, Labour’s re-election campaign targeted hunters’ votes, and although Joseph Muscat made no electoral pledge to reopen bird trapping, the reintroduction of trapping as a sop to the hunting lobby opened up an old environmental wound.