The European Ombudsman has closed her enquiry into the way in which the European Commission went about collecting the data that led to the downgrading of the wolf's protection status from ‘strictly protected’ to ‘protected’, following a similar complaint currently being dealt with by the Court of Justice of the EU (see EUROPE 13549/37).
The overlap between the complaint lodged by the NGO ClientEarth with the European Ombudsman in October 2024 and the complaint lodged by several NGOs (Green Impact ETS, Earth ODV, One Voice, etc.) with the European General Court in Case T-634/24 in December 2024 means that the former must give priority to the latter.
“The institution of the European Ombudsman was designed to complement the EU’s judicial system, not to duplicate it”, said the Ombudsman, Teresa Anjinho. Continuing to examine these questions would be tantamount to interfering with “the allocation of powers under EU law”, she explained to the NGO ClientEarth, which had asked her to suspend the investigation rather than close it.
ClientEarth had criticised the European Commission for steering the debate when it invited the public to submit updated data on the wolf population and its impact. According to the NGO, the wolf was presented as a danger to livestock and humans, without this claim being based on scientific evidence.
At the beginning of June, the Council of the EU gave its final approval to the revision of the Habitats Directive, which changes the protection status of the wolf from ‘strictly protected’ to ‘protected’ (see EUROPE 13654/30). The Habitats Directive is now aligned with the Bern Convention, which was updated at the end of 2024 (see EUROPE 13537/15). (Original version in French by Florent Servia)