BirdLife Malta will not be attending today’s Ornis Committee meetin, the organisation said today.
It said it will be boycotting the meeting because the government’s tactics have shown that the Ornis Committee "is nothing more than a government created smokescreen for the politicised hunting issue".
BirdLife's decision follows the government's adoption of amendments to Malta’s spring hunting framework legislation twice in a matter of weeks, without Ornis Committee members even being aware that the legislation was drafted.
“BirdLife Malta refuses to be part of today’s powerless meeting which will be doing nothing more than rubber stamping what the government has already decided.” said BirdLife president and Ornis Committee member Joseph Mangion.
BirdLife's said that yesterday’s amendments came after the Commission last October renewed legal action against Malta for adopting spring hunting framework legislation.
It said that while the government addressed some of the issues raised by the Commission, the amendments at the same time further relaxed the previous legislation, by removing the limit of 2,500 hunting licenses.
The Prime Minister had also said that “Malta reached an exceptional agreement with the European Commission and that this is the first time that EC will be agreeing to a method through which a spring hunting derogation will be allowed".
This statement, BirdLife said, contradicted the government’s previous statements, made when the Commission decided to take Malta to ECJ, that they had agreed to spring hunting during the Accession Treaty Agreement.
“The Prime Minister now states that this is the first time an agreement has been reached on the spring hunting issue. Yet, we have reason to believe that this is once again a misleading statement as the European Commission does not make agreements with member states on derogations - the onus of the responsibility for applying a derogation and then justifying it rests with the government,” Mr Mangion said.
BirdLife Malta insisted that what has been agreed on is only the changes the European Commission requested from Malta in its framework legislation and this could in no way be interpreted as an open cheque for Malta to open a spring hunting season as implied by the prime minister.
BirdLife pointed out that during the ECJ case the government had suggested that 15,000 hunters and trappers in Malta and Gozo could hunt only around 5,000 quails and 4,000 turtle doves during the whole autumn hunting season.
"And this is despite the admissions of the hunting lobby that the actual number of birds shot and trapped are many times higher than what the hunters report in their carnet de chasse, as well as the fact that MEPA was aware of this serious under reporting," BirdLife said.