Farmers across Europe, especially in Western Europe, have long called for stricter measures to protect their livestock from wolf attacks. According to a 2023 European Commission report, livestock losses in Spain, France, and Italy account for half of the total damage in the EU. Germany, Greece, and Croatia also report significant livestock damage due to wolf attacks.
A majority among the EU ambassadors emerged when Luxembourg and Portugal joined the countries pushing for adjustment this week, and as Germany partially changed its position. Current regulations allow shooting wolves only in exceptional cases, but mainly rural livestock farmers are calling for reopening the hunt.
On Friday, a final vote was held in the EU Competitiveness Council where the ambassadors’ decision was confirmed. Brussels must inform the Bern Convention secretariat no later than next week, as the responsible committee meets only once annually. The Permanent Committee’s annual meeting will take place in December 2024.
The level of protection for endangered animals and plants has been internationally established since the late 1970s in the Bern Convention. Several dozen countries are now parties, including not only the 27 EU countries but also microstates like Monaco and San Marino, four North African countries, and various Eastern European non-EU countries such as Romania, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan.
Moreover, the European Union has enshrined the same protection of plants and animals in its own European Birds and Habitats Directives (EHD). Although EU countries can modify or repeal their own EHD, doing so would conflict with the Bern Convention. The ministers of the countries in that Bern Convention meet only once per year.
Those dozens of parties each recognize different endangered plant and animal species, categorized into two groups: strictly protected and protected. Over recent years, these rules have hardly changed. A treaty amendment requires a majority, but the 27 EU countries are not unanimous on the issue.
Some countries have no problems with wolves but do face issues with other endangered species such as moose in northern and eastern Scandinavia or brown bears in the French-Spanish Pyrenees and in Romania, Slovenia, and Bulgaria. Critics fear the EU’s requested status downgrade would open the door for other countries to hunt other species.
Germany now demands as a condition that first more than forty convention countries must agree to weakening the protection status, and that it applies only to the wolf, not other endangered species. Only then, according to Germany, may the EU Habitats Directive be amended accordingly. Furthermore, the 27 EU countries and the European Parliament must also approve this.