The opening of another spring hunting season demonstrated the government’s “empty rhetoric about sustainability”, Alternattiva Demokratika said yesterday.

Apart from not respecting the EU Birds Directive and going counter to the policy of sustainability, the government puts the entire country at risk of legal action by the EU Commission, AD’s animal welfare spokesman Simon Galea told a news conference.

“Providing the EU with dubious data for birds killed in autumn based on information supplied by hunters; the lack of enforcement, together with years of repeated failures in this respect puts the same country’s credibility at stake.”

AD secretary general Ralph Cassar said that while AD had always been clear in its opposition to spring hunting, the government was “bending over backwards to accommodate hunters”, while Labour leader Joseph Muscat “is especially silent on this issue”.

“Spring hunting is definitely not what the Maltese electorate voted for in the EU accession referendum,” he added.