Luxemburg, 14/06/2007 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission took Finland to the Court of Justice for failing to fully transpose the “habitats” directive (Council directive92/43/EEC). Finnish legislation allows wolf hunting permits, which do not meet the requirements of the text, to be granted. The directive only allows exemptions to the ban on wolf hunting in very precise situations - where there is no other satisfactory solution to the problem of problematic individual animals, and with the guarantee that this hunting would not harm the wolf population in general.
In a judgment delivers on Thursday (case C-342/05), the Court found for the Commission insofar as the Finnish system allows the award of preventive hunting permits (something which is not provided for in the directive), and wolf numbers in Finland were not high at the end of the period set by the Commission in its reasoned opinion. However, the judgment felt that the Commission had failed to prove that there was a consistent administrative practice of granting wolf hunting permits, without prior investigation of alternative options. The two precise examples given by the Commission did not constitute proof that such a practice existed, the Court said.
Tapani Veistola, head of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, welcomed the outcome, but would have liked the Court to have gone further. “This confirms that Finland does not comply with the habitats directive,” he said, before going on to express the hope that Helsinki would remedy this failure in the reform of legislation on hunting, scheduled for this autumn. He regretted, however, that the Court did not find against the allocation of hunting quotas in Finland, something that could be continued under the new system. This system, which is independent of the permits in question at the Court, would still be a threat to Finland's wolf population. Mr Veistola said there were other ways of dealing with “problematic wolves” (particularly those which had developed a taste for pet dogs), such as putting up fences. (cd)