The European Commission has taken legal action to minimise the finch trapping derogation in Malta, environmental NGO BirdLife said in a statement released this afternoon.

The European Commission claimed that Malta has “no justification” for the frequent trapping of finches since Malta “had agreed to phase out trapping within five years of joining the European Union (EU), as stated in Malta’s Accession Treaty itself”, the statement says. Legal action has thus been taken to phase out trapping entirely in Malta.

The issue was raised during a conference titled “Hunting under the Birds Directive: An open debate on the state of play”, hosted on 25th February 2021 by the European Parliament’s Intergroup on “Biodiversity, Hunting, Countryside” in conjunction with the European Federation for Hunting and Conservation (FACE).

Deputy Head of the Nature Unit in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Environment Dr Micheal O’Briain addressed Malta’s approach to derogations, saying that Malta was the only country to be given a transition period to align with the EU’s Bird Directive, which was ultimately unsuccessful.

“O’Briain continued to explain that tradition cannot be a justification to breach EU directives and insisted that the European Commission acts against all countries fairly as it has done with other countries like France and Spain”, BirdLife Malta’s statement says.

BirdLife Europe’s Senior Head of Policy Mr Ariel Brunner called for the Maltese to change their hunting habits and work on helping birds, rather than harming them. One way of achieving this is to keep a record of which bird species are in danger, he said.

“[Brunner] emphasised the fact that hunters should be more disciplined to become credible in collecting data of amounts being hunted, something which has been abused and failing for decades. He stated that the onus is on the hunters to prove they are hunting sustainably and if they do not know the amounts being harvested, then the claim of sustainable hunting remains fiction”, the statement says.

BirdLife Malta CEO Mark Sultana supported O’Briain and Brunner’s stance to halt finch trappings and said that Malta has been taking the European Bird Directive for granted for years.

“We keep on insisting with the Prime Minister to take the direction and ethos of the European Green Deal seriously and stop further derogations. If this plea continues to fall on deaf ears, we expect the European Commission to continue with the Infringement Procedures to bring Malta in line with the EU Directives for the benefit of the Maltese citizens and Europe in general,” he said.