Alfred Sant said that his aim, if elected to the European Parliament, would be “to secure for Maltese hunters and trappers treatment that was fully equal and equivalent to that accorded to other EU citizens in their home country, no more and no less.”

The EP candidate, who was at a meeting with hunters and trappers at Luqa, said that “for fairness sake, this should be acceptable to all concerned since as a fully fledged EU member state, Malta needed to respect all the Union’s rules, to which it had subscribed by the fact of joining.”

Hunters present claimed that the rules being applied to Malta were more stringent than in the rest of the EU since many derogations to the rules were allowed in other EU member states but denied to Malta.

Dr Sant stated that the present Government was “trying to obtain clarifications of the existing rules that would allow more space within which hunters and trappers could exercise their activities legally.” He asked to receive copies of all rules that seemed to give better treatment to other countries.

The EP candidate was invited to supper by a club at Luqa where hunters and trappers assemble and listened to their claims and proposals about the future of their pastime. There was agreement by all that the truth about what was really going on in the sector needed to be more widely publicised in Malta and the EU.

Alfred Sant said that the “most important limitation on hunting and trapping in Malta was that it could only be practised on migratory species since the islands lacked indigenous species, unlike most other EU member states. This meant that the EU’s hunting and trapping regulations appeared to be more restrictive here than elsewhere.”

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