The European Court of Justice has clarified the concept of captive breeding of hyacinth macaw parrot specimens in a judgment delivered on Thursday 8 September (Case C-659/20).
ET breeds parrots in the Czech Republic. In 2015, he applied to the competent authority for an exemption from the ban on commercial activities for five hyacinth macaw parrots born in 2014 in his breeding. The grandparents of these parrots were first imported to Bratislava and then by car to the Czech Republic. The regional authority refused to grant the derogation on the grounds that it could not be stated with certainty that the stock had been established in accordance with the legal provisions.
The Court concludes that Union law precludes a specimen of such an animal species held by a breeder from being regarded as born and bred in captivity where the ancestors of that specimen, which are not part of the breeder’s breeding stock, have been acquired by a third party in a manner which is detrimental to the survival of the species concerned in the wild.
The Court recalls that the concept of ‘breeding stock’ does not refer to a simple breeding process, detached from any concrete physical installation. Thus, ancestors that have never been owned or held by the breeding establishment concerned do not fall under this concept.
Link to the judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/301 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)