Crunch time for hunting

Malta's Attorney General yesterday defended Malta's right to retain spring hunting in a do-or-die hearing before the European Court of Justice, arguing that putting a stop to hunting during the spring season would practically mean the end of hunting on the island.

The European Commission, Malta's adversary in the case, holds that under the EU's Birds Directive, the island cannot allow hunting to take place in the rearing and reproduction season.

The parties' respective submissions were made before five judges at the ECJ in Luxemburg, who hold the fate of the Maltese spring hunting season in their hands and are now expected to move on to give a ruling.

The two sides focused mainly on the number of turtle doves and quail shot during the autumn.

Since it joined the EU in 2004, save for this year and the last during which a temporary ban was imposed, Malta has chosen to implement a derogation from the directive which allows hunting to take place in different seasons where "there is no other satisfactory solution".

Malta insisted yesterday that the number of birds from these species available for hunting during the autumn was too low to bar hunters from going out in the springtime.

The Attorney General, Silvio Camilleri, said that by no stretch of the imagination could anyone conclude that Malta was contributing towards the decline of the turtle dove and quail in Europe.

"How can this be justified if Maltese hunters do not even catch one bird each during the autumn season," he argued.

"Statistics show that, while in spring, Maltese hunters can catch up to 2.7 turtle doves each, in autumn this goes down to 0.35 per hunter, not even a whole bird each."

Dr Camilleri said these numbers and the fact that migration in autumn took place only on a few days in September and October, and only on the western side of Malta, showed that autumn was no real alternative to spring.

"If hunting is not permitted in spring it practically means that we are almost not permitting hunting at all."

However, the Commission rebutted by pointing out that Malta's case was disproved by the figures submitted by Maltese hunters themselves. "We can't understand this argument as according to Malta's same figures, in autumn 2004 Maltese hunters caught 8,000 birds while in 2005 the figure went up to 10,000 turtle doves and quails," said Peter Oliver, the Commission's main legal counsel.

"These figures show that the number of birds which can be hunted in Malta during the autumn is much more than satisfactory."

The political argument about whether the Commission had promised one thing to Malta before accession and another afterwards, was also made.

According to Dr Camilleri, "the Commission has breached the legitimate expectation which it had generated during the accession negotiations with regard to the possibility of Malta authorising spring hunting of quail and turtle doves".

The Commission denied that it had given any such assurances during negotiations. "On the contrary, the Commission has always asserted that the application of that provision (derogation) had to be assessed in accordance only with the conditions which it lays down," the legal counsel argued.

The judges are not expected to hear any other submissions by the parities and will move on to give their ruling. According to an ECJ spokesman, this normally takes between four to six months to be delivered. However, it will definitely be issued before the start of the next spring hunting season.

The Commission's legal procedures against Malta started in 2006 when it argued that the island was not justified in invoking a derogation from the Birds Directive.

The last time Malta allowed spring hunting to take place was in 2007. Last year, the ECJ issued interim measures to ban spring hunting until this case is decided.

This year it was Malta itself that chose to impose the ban as the Commission had already warned the island that it would face another court order unless it did so.