Years of deliberation will be put to an end next week when the European Court of Justice announces its verdict in the spring hunting case instituted by the European Commission against Malta.

In the case, Malta stands charged with having opened the spring hunting season, illegally, according to the EC, for four years running between 2004 and 2007.

The argument has been a long-standing source of division between the hunters' lobby, which contends it is in actual fact Malta's largest non-governmental organisation - by far, and the government.

The lobby argues that Malta's hunters had been lied to in the run up to Malta's European Union accession, and just before the referendum that sealed Malta's future as an EU member.

Hunters have every right to feel slighted. They were given assurance after assurance that they would be able to keep practising their spring pursuit once Malta joined the EU. They were even sent a letter signed by Eddie Fenech Adami, who told them in effect that the government had struck a deal with Brussels over the controversial practice and that they need not be concerned about voting for Malta's accession - only for the EC to have turned around and said there had never been any such agreement.

There is no excuse for the treatment that was meted out to Malta's hunters and trappers.

The question here is not about the illegal hunting of protected species, but rather about the advisability of hunting Malta's legal quarry of turtledoves and quail during their breeding season. The predominance of hunting protected species has, unfortunately, cast the practice of hunting in an even poorer light, and it has given law-abiding hunters something of an undeserved stigma.

The birds migrating over Malta are not Malta's birds - they are the common property of Africa, where they winter, and Europe, where they summer. They simply fly over Malta en route. Many of those species are endangered and many of those sit stuffed in Maltese households.

The court has by now heard the arguments, and Malta will live with the consequences.

But, at the end of the day, what are the consequences?

Hunting in spring will be banned for good or the practice will be allowed to continue, perhaps with certain checks and balances.

Either way, the hunting and environmental lobbies will certainly have a lot to say about the verdict.

Malta also faces the prospect of punitive fines should it be found guilty of having infringed the Wild Birds Directive for four years running, although the 2007 spring season had been cut by 10 days. Many have also speculated that the fines could run into the seven-figure region.

One hopes this will not be the case given the current economic circumstances that Malta, and indeed much of Europe, has found itself mired in, and with the EC also pursuing Malta over its seemingly ever-growing public deficit.