Opinion: Trapped in a state of lawlessness

On 19 September, the European Court of Justice declared Malta’s finch trapping for research was illegal.  Just three weeks later, Malta’s ORNIS committee voted in favour of a proposal by the hunters’ lobby, FKNK, to continue “the finch research programme”.

ORNIS voted for trappers to be allowed to break the law.  Which part of “Finch trapping for research is illegal” does ORNIS not understand?

That European Court decision is final. There can be no further appeals. Trapping protected finches for “research” is a crime.

Malta’s Labour government had been taking the European Commission for a ride for years.  Finally, justice caught up.

Labour’s “research” argument was a cover-up to allow trapping to continue, the European Commission argued.  The European Court of Justice agreed.

Malta’s Labour government failed ”to align with European law”; Malta “failed to fulfil its obligations”. In simple language, Labour was defying European law.

Malta’s “finch trapping for research” had absolutely “no genuine research purpose”, the court concluded.  Labour was trying to fool the Commission, but the Commission wasn’t having it and took Malta to court.  And the court decided that Malta was cheating the Commission with its nonsense – fake research and citizen-science.

But like some horror film in which the vampire is slain but keeps coming back to life, Labour hasn’t thrown in the towel – far from it. It openly declared that it “remained resolute in defending the lawful practices of hunters and trappers.”

Unbelievably FKNK proposed just that – to continue happily breaking the law and defying the European court.  It’s proposed to ORNIS to instruct the government to allow “the finch research programme” to continue.

Bizarrely, they said their proposed illegal programme “would take into full account the recent ECJ judgement”. That’s impossible. They can’t square a circle.

Even more bizarrely, ORNIS voted in favour of the utterly ridiculous FKNK proposal. ORNIS is advising the government to allow trappers to break the law, which will incur financial penalties. And that’s the point.

No doubt the government will accept ORNIS’ recommendation, and no doubt Malta will carry the financial costs of defying the ECJ ruling.

We didn’t vote for FKNK’s proposal,  we didn’t vote for ORNIS’ endorsement of that proposal, and we didn’t vote for Labour to burden us with more financial penalties.  But that’s exactly what will happen.

The taxpayer will pay for FKNK to keep breaking the law and enjoying their illegal hobby.  In gratitude for Labour’s defence of their illegalities, those thousands of hunters and trappers will vote Labour again.

We’re paying twice over – we’re paying to allow those trappers to break the law and we’re also paying for their vote for Labour.  We’ll pay for their illegalities and we’ll also pay the much higher price of another Labour victory on the back of votes bought from FKNK.

FKNK publicly thanked the minister, a fellow trapper and hunter, for his “determination and commitment to continue to defend the legal practices of hunters and trappers”. Spoiler alert – finch trapping for research is not legal.

FKNK also said it would “continue to offer its expertise and resources to the government”.  What resources would those be?  Their votes?

Labour is turning Malta into a rogue outlaw state.  The law means nothing if it isn’t imposed.  The European Court ruling is worthless if the state won’t implement it.

This is an EU member state that not only fails to uphold the rule of law but enables thousands of trappers to breach it with impunity, with the full support of its puppet committee, ORNIS.

ORNIS is made up of 11 members.  Just two of those represent Birdlife Malta – and between them they have only one vote.  The rest are the chairman and members appointed by the minister, representatives of FKNK, and an expert on hunting and trapping and another on avifauna.

Birdlife Malta is hopelessly outnumbered. Its members are as repeatedly and consistently slaughtered in that committee as the birds it tries to protect.

The official website of the ORNIS committee should upload the minutes of committee meetings.  But the last minutes uploaded are those from the meeting held on 2 August 2023.  What happened since?

Birdlife voted against FKNK’s proposal with its one vote at the latest ORNIS committee meeting. Their voice was drowned out completely by the powerful lobby of FKNK, the rest of the ORNIS committee and the Labour government.

FKNK keeps coming up with the most hilarious proposals. It suggested that its trappers should be taught to ring birds because they use “tried and tested” methods to trap them.

They bragged they’re far better at trapping birds than the handful of Birdlife volunteers. They boasted that their 4,000 trappers are far more effective at catching finches.  We have no doubt.  They’re so effective that they’ve decimated the bird population – which is why finches are protected.

In 2016 and 2017, the last year for which we have official data, trappers caught 16,000 finches.  Last year. as part of the so called “Citizen Science Finch Research Programme” there were 2,616 authorised trapping sites.  If just 10 finches were trapped in each of those sites, over 26,000 finches were caught last year.

The government is desperately trying to help FKNK start ringing birds to justify their trapping.  It issued a €300,000 tender for 10 bird ringers from overseas to accompany FKNK’s trappers to ring birds they catch. Nobody from EURING ringers took up the offer.

We know what’s coming next.  Labour is more desperate than ever to retain the votes of those thousands of trappers and hunters and the thousands more of their close relatives.

So Labour will defy the European Court. It will defy the European Commission.  It will pay the financial penalties out of our money. But it won’t back off.  It can’t afford to lose another vote.