The Young European Federalists (JEF) Malta, has this evening stated its position on the spring hunting referendum being held in April.

JEF said that it will be voting against the maintenance of the derogation for hunting in spring, for quails and turtle doves. “We have taken this position out of sheer belief in the basic European principle of sustainability.”

“Since neither quails nor turtle doves are predator species or agricultural pests, we think that killing them during their breeding period is definitely not a measure that will in any way further the sustainability of these species,” JEF said.

It said that, “JEF don’t just vaguely believe in democratic principles, we constantly put them to work in our quotidian duties. This makes us discuss issues thoroughly rather than opt to simplify a complex question to an extent which ejects the most salient of points to merely arrive at a clear cut conclusion.”

“The hunting question, which was never high on our agenda, came along unprecedentedly. For the sake of adopting one common position in the wake of a vote which the organisation must cast at the Commission for Social Policy (KPS), the referendum question had to be reproduced before the executive, and an individual vote had to be cast. Not before each member delivered his views however,” it said.

“Notwithstanding this,” JEF continued, “as the mixed vote within the executive showed, we believe that the matter should not have come to this stage to be decided by a yes or no vote in a referendum. Firstly, because in 2003, the majority of the Maltese people answered Yes in a referendum asking whether they wanted Malta to join the European Union.”

JEF stated, “it was, or at least, it should have been very clear, that they were voting for Malta to join according to the package negotiated between the Maltese Government and the European Commission. That famous negotiated package included within it, the derogation allowing hunting in spring and it caused no absolute rifts, divisions or raptures.”

“It was only due to repeated illegal acts which went beyond the very tolerant derogation, and the recent militant approach adopted by environmentalists in Malta, that we have come to this absolutist situation,” said JEF

“This is not to say that as JEF we do not hold dear the provision for plebeian petition, which is the ultimate tool in the hands of the electorate to directly partake in the political decisions and one of the very few manifestations of bottom-up democracy in the Maltese system,” The Young European Federalists Malta concluded.

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