Six day war? Hunters shoot down ‘ridiculous’ compromise
Government’s plans for a six-day spring season may or may not be acceptable to the European Commission – but it has already been soundly rejected by both pro- and anti-hunting lobbies. RAPHAEL VASSALLO analyses the final implosion of the great hunting deception
If it was intended as a sop to placate hunters’ anger at the loss of a full spring season, the compromise decision announced on Friday appears to have backfired... badly.
Hunters are arguably more incensed at what they have termed a ‘ridiculous’ season – i.e., six days towards the end of April (when quail migration is already over), and licences limited to a mere 2,500 hunters – than they would have been had the government not opened any spring season at all.
On the other side of the fence, BirdLife Malta’s reaction was equally scathing, describing the proposal as a ‘farce’ that will almost certainly land Malta in the European Court of Justice for a second time.
All in all, it is difficult to imagine a more complete and utter disaster from a purely political point of view. And yet, following the ECJ’s notoriously ambiguous verdict last September, it is debatable whether Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi could have done more to deliver on a decade-old electoral promise that we now know (or should know, at any rate) was untenable from day one.
Never mind the personal letters sent to each hunter by former PM Eddie Fenech Adami, or all the front-page articles in the Malta-EU Information Centre’s magazine, Aggornat. It is now patently obvious that, with Malta tucked safely in the EU, the old mantra that ‘spring hunting will continue unchanged’ after accession was at best an exaggeration, at worst a downright lie.
But there may yet be some truth to the possibility of limited hunting in spring: supported by last September’s ECJ verdict, as well as an independent interpretation of the same by EU law expert Prof. Peter Xuereb in comments to this newspaper last month.
So what went wrong? At a glance, it seems the ‘mistake’ (if such it can be called) took place on two levels.
One: by choosing to interpret the ECJ verdict as a definite ‘yes’ to spring hunting – and even then, only to vindicate its own earlier assurances – Government both built up hunters’ expectations and created for itself a commitment it couldn’t possibly meet.
Two: Government chose to concentrate exclusively on satisfying the conditions of a derogation under Article 9(a) of the Directive... without giving due consideration to whether the resulting, pitiful compromise would be acceptable to the hunters, on whose behalf it was negotiated in the first place.
For it is now clear that some form of ‘negotiation’ did indeed take place. Contrary to statements by both Birdlife and FKNK over the past weeks, MaltaToday is reliably informed that ‘EU bureaucrats’ were involved at some level in discussions on how a derogation may legally be applied.
The resulting ‘mock-season’, announced Friday, is therefore tailor-made to fit the strict parameters laid out by the ECJ ruling: limited numbers are pre-determined by a strict restriction of licences to only 2,500 – a small fraction of the total number of registered hunters. Bag-limits in turn suggest that the lucky 2,500 will not be able to shoot more than a maximum of three specimens apiece over the entire week.
Self-regulation is also stipulated, as hunters will theoretically be expected to ‘report’ each individual catch by means of an SMS (though how measure this can possibly be enforced remains a mystery).
But whether these conditions will be acceptable to the Commission now rests on two uncomfortable factors: one, the issue of ‘strict supervision’, which to date remains unresolved. No mention has been made of any proposed increase to the police’s woefully under-staffed Administrative Law Enforcement Agency; still less has any ‘wildlife crime unit’ been created, of the kind demanded by both Birdlife and FKNK.
The second issue concerns the validity of figures already supplied by Malta as evidence in last year’s European Court case. To avoid a repeat performance of 2007, Malta has until October to submit detailed information of bag-counts for this year’s season. If there are any noticeable discrepancies between the new figures and those already submitted (as Birdlife Malta insists there will be), Malta may find itself accused of perjury along with ongoing defiance of the European Wild Birds Directive.
Meanwhile, there are more pressing logistical issues to contend with. It is not at all clear how police stations will cope with the inevitable chaos, when some 16,000 hunters descend to claim a maximum of 2,500 licences, to be dished out on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.
But the major test will come after the season is already over. The worst-case scenario for Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi remains that envisaged by BirdLife Malta in its official reaction: i.e., that the European Commission invokes Article 260 of the Lisbon treaty, and opens infringement procedures once again.
An additional case before the European Court of Justice (this time complete with the possibility of hefty fines) will surely dent the personal credibility of a Prime Minister who – perhaps unwisely – has taken the hunting issue directly under his own wing.
Considering that Gonzi now runs this risk without any chance of winning over either hunters or birders, Friday’s announcement will have to go down as an astonishing misjudgement on all fronts.
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