Turns out the best April Fool’s joke ever is the way the hunters and our politicians deceived us into thinking the EU actually granted a derogation to allow spring hunting in Malta.

I've been questioning the obvious for quite a while now.  Think about it. Why on earth would the EU grant us this exception? What makes Malta – and only Malta – so special?

Try as I might I couldn't find a logical explanation for this benevolence, particularly in the light of the other derogations, which are all based on objective reasons and not on some vague notion of tradition and delizzji. The EU couldn't give a quail's egg about that rubbish (yes, rubbish).

So what was the deal? Faced with a seemingly unsolvable puzzle, I had only one other option short of waiting a month for an official reply. I googled the hell out of that derogation, bitch.

Sadly, in this case Google was not my friend. No official document gave me what I was after, ie a confirmation that Malta is excused from the spring hunting ban. 

Turns out there's a good reason for this and it's not that my Google skills suck. Malta was never actually granted this derogation. It only exists in the imagination of our politicians and hunters.

I only managed to confirm this thanks to this week's announcement by SHout, explaining that hey... Remember that derogation? It's a phantom. It's not there after all! What is there, on the other hand, is a whopping lawsuit against Malta for us to stop spring hunting immediately. Oh yeah, there's also an ECJ decision calling on Malta to behave itself. Read all about it here.

So, away from the fairyland all our politicians operate in, this is what actually happened. Upon joining the EU, Malta inherited the Birds Directive, which assumes a level of maturity from the member states and allows individual countries to apply a specific derogation if they deem fit. This was Malta's cue to go try to sneak in a bullet-storm of dead birds through this back door.

However – and this is one hell of a however –  the derogation requires EU approval, which is granted provided all the following conditions need to co-exist: there is no other solution;  hunting is carried out under strictly supervised conditions and on a selective basis; the birds killed are a small number.

Of course, the approval was not given becuase it's obvious to any six-year-old that there was indeed another satisfactory solution (it's called hunting through the rest of the year); that conditions for spring hunting were anything but supervised; and that the number of birds killed was definitely not small.

The EU commission immediately tried to go medieval on Malta's ass, telling us in no uncertain terms that no, we do not get a derogation from the birds directive and we’d better bloody well follow the rules, “or else”.  Which warning Malta then proceeded to ignore.

A series of negative reports and law suits followed, with Malta getting more and more  desperate by the minute.  Eventually, the Maltese government ran out of logic and said well, stuff you, EU, we will continue breaking your stupid laws because "the capture of birds for recreational purposes is an historical and cultural tradition in Malta".

I kid you not. That was the legal argument brought forward to defend the derogation, when all else failed. You can imagine how well that one went down. You can enjoy a sampling of exasperated reactions from EU officials here.

Concluson: Malta tried to weasel its way into a derogation and failed spectacularly. There IS no derogation. Which begs the question. Why is this referendum even happening? Why are all the political stakeholders maintaining the deception that Malta's application for a derogation enjoys the blessing of the EU, when reality is that we will probably wind up paying thousands of Euros in fines for violating the directive?

I'm amazed at the way no one is talking about this, given the ramifications. Should the 'no camp' win – hallelujah  - damage will be limited to a waste of tax payers' money and resources, which is already bad enough.

But if the 'yes camp' were to win, the implications are more far-reaching. Because what people will have voted for is permission to keep on breaking EU law.  It's a bit as though some random local council decided to hold a referendum about whether residents should keep on paying taxes. It doesn't matter who wins, because the referendum is illegal anyway,.

So, let's say the 'yes camp' wins. What happens when the chickens come home to roost? How many thousands will the fines imposed by the EU run into? And finally, how will the government of the day eventually explain to the hunters that, even though they won the referendum, they still have to give up spring hunting? The backlash to that will be scary indeed.

Unless, of course, what the government is saying is that it doesn't  give a hoot either way about breaking EU law and that a win for the 'yes camp' will be honoured no matter what those killjoys in Brussels say.

And that, fellow voters, is a whole other different kettle of worried fish.

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