Wolf protection downgrade set for green light in EU
Members of the Bern Convention, tasked with the protection of wildlife in Europe as well as some African countries, agreed in December to lower the wolf's status from "strictly protected" to "protected".
The downgrade came into force in March, and the European Commission moved immediately to revise related EU laws to reflect the change, which allows hunting to resume under strict criteria.
Barring a last-minute upset, EU lawmakers will give their approval on Thursday to the rule change, backed by the conservative, centrist and socialist groups in the European Parliament.
The European Union -- as a party to the Bern Convention -- was the driving force behind the push to lower protections, arguing that the increase in wolf numbers has led to more frequent contact with humans and livestock.
But activists fear the measure would upset the recovery made by the species over the past 10 years after it faced near extinction a century ago.
Echoing their concerns, green and left-wing parties were expected to vote against a change they denounce as politically motivated and lacking scientific basis.
"Downgrading wolf protection... panders to fear, not facts," warned Sebastian Everding of the Left group in parliament, saying the move "ignores effective coexistence tools".
Grey wolves were virtually exterminated in Europe 100 years ago, but their numbers have surged to a current population of 20,300, mostly in the Balkans, Nordic countries, Italy and Spain.
No 'licence to kill'
Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has made the case that "wolf packs have become a real danger especially for livestock" in some parts of Europe.
Lowering protections "will help local authorities to actively manage wolf populations while protecting both biodiversity and our rural livelihoods", she said when the convention change took effect.
In late 2022, von der Leyen lost her beloved pony Dolly to a wolf that crept into its enclosure on her family's rural property in northern Germany -- leading some to suggest the matter had become personal.
In practice, the EU rule change would make it easier to hunt wolves in rural and mountainous regions where their proximity to livestock and sheepdogs is deemed too threatening.
Von der Leyen's European People's Party (EPP), which has spearheaded the change, has stressed that member states will remain in charge of wolf management on their soil -- but with more flexibility than before.
To date, there have been no human casualties linked to rising wolf populations -- but some lawmakers backing the change warn that it may only be a question of time.
Spain's Esther Herranz Garcia, a member of the conservative EPP, cited figures showing that wolves attacked more than 60,000 farm animals in the bloc every year.
"The people who feed our country cannot be expected to work with this fear hanging over them," said France's Valerie Deloge, a livestock farmer and lawmaker with the hard-right Patriots group, where the rule change has also found support.
Socialist and centrist lawmakers -- while agreeing to back the changes under a fast-track procedure -- have struck a more measured tone.
© 2025 AFP
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
France 24
4 hours ago
- France 24
Trump's new travel ban comes into effect, citizens of 12 countries barred from US
President Donald Trump 's new ban on travel to the US by citizens from 12 mainly African and Middle Eastern countries took effect Monday amid rising tension over the president's escalating campaign of immigration enforcement. The new proclamation, which Trump signed last week, applies to citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It also imposes heightened restrictions on people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela who are outside the US and don't hold a valid visa. The new ban does not revoke visas previously issued to people from countries on the list, according to guidance issued Friday to all US diplomatic missions. However, unless an applicant meets narrow criteria for an exemption to the ban, his or her application will be rejected starting Monday. Travellers with previously issued visas should still be able to enter the US even after the ban takes effect. While many of the listed countries send few people to the United States, Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela had been major sources of immigration in recent years. Haitian-American Elvanise Louis-Juste, who was at the airport Sunday in Newark, New Jersey, awaiting a flight to her home state of Florida, said many Haitians wanting to come to the US are simply seeking to escape violence and unrest. Haitians continue to flee poverty and hunger while police and a UN-backed mission fight a surge in gang violence, with armed men controlling at least 85% of its capital, Port-au-Prince. 'I have family in Haiti, so it's pretty upsetting to see and hear,' Louis-Juste, 23, said of the travel ban. 'I don't think it's a good thing. I think it's very upsetting.' Many immigration experts say the new ban is designed to beat court challenges by focusing on the visa application process and appears more carefully crafted than a hastily written executive order during Trump's first term that denied entry to citizens of mainly Muslim countries. Trump said this time that some countries had 'deficient' screening for passports and other public documents or have historically refused to take back their own citizens. He relied extensively on an annual Homeland Security report of people who remain in the US after their visas expired. Measuring overstay rates has challenged experts for decades, but the government has made a limited attempt annually since 2016. Trump's proclamation cites overstay rates for eight of the 12 banned countries. Trump also tied the new ban to a terrorist attack in Boulder, Colorado, saying it underscored the dangers posed by some visitors who overstay visas. US officials say the man charged in the attack overstayed a tourist visa. He is from Egypt, a country that is not on Trump's restricted list. The ban was quickly denounced by groups that provide aid and resettlement help to refugees. 'This policy is not about national security – it is about sowing division and vilifying communities that are seeking safety and opportunity in the United States,' said Abby Maxman, president of Oxfam America, a nonprofit international relief organisation. The inclusion of Afghanistan angered some supporters who have worked to resettle its people. The ban does make exceptions for Afghans on Special Immigrant Visas, generally people who worked most closely with the US government during the two-decade-long war there. Afghanistan had been one of the largest sources of resettled refugees, with about 14,000 arrivals in a 12-month period through September 2024. Trump suspended refugee resettlement his first day in office.
Euronews
5 hours ago
- Euronews
Fact check: Where in Europe grants the most citizenships?
Italians have been voting over the past couple of days on whether to slash citizenship residency requirements for non-EU immigrants from 10 years to five, but misinformation has swirled about the vote. The country's Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Matteo Salvini and others have claimed that Italy is the European country that grants the most citizenship applications, for example. "The most dangerous [referendum] is the one that would extend citizenship to hundreds of thousands of people indiscriminately, with Italy being the number one European country in terms of the granting of citizenship every year," he said in May. However, it's not true that Italy approves the most citizenship requests year on year, and we can check this by looking at the most recent numbers from Eurostat. They show that in 2023, Spain granted the most citizenships, sitting at more than 240,000. That accounts for 22.9% of the total number of citizenships granted in the EU. Italy came in second place with 214,000; then Germany with 200,000; France 97,000 and Sweden with 68,000. The UK granted 202,000 citizenships in 2023, according to British government figures. The leader board changes when the number of citizenships granted is analysed in relation to a country's population. In this instance, Luxembourg came first in the EU in 2023, with 8.8 citizenships per thousand people, followed by Sweden (6.4), Spain (5), Belgium (4.7) and Italy (3.6) scraping into the top five. Slovakia, Bulgaria and Lithuania grant the fewest citizenships per 1,000 people, according to Eurostat, all of them sitting at below 0.5. Eurostat also calculates the naturalisation rate for each country. It compares the number of citizenships granted to the non-national resident population. Under this metric, the highest naturalisation rate was in Sweden (7.9), then Romania (5.9) and Italy (4.1). "In 2023, in the EU as a whole, 2.6 usual residents per hundred resident non-national citizens were granted citizenship," Eurostat said. It's true, therefore, that Italy consistently ranks among the highest by total number of citizenships granted, and has given the most in some years, such as in 2022 and 2020. In the former, Italy again naturalised around 214,000 people, and in the latter it handed out citizenship to some 132,000. Nevertheless, as things stand and as the results of the referendum come in, Italy has some of the strictest citizenship requirements in Europe, with immigrants needing to live there for 10 years before officially becoming Italian. Others such as Switzerland, Lithuania and Slovenia have similar stipulations in place, while a sizeable amount of European countries ask that immigrants live there only five years. For example, Finland, France, Ireland and Portugal. While Italy has been mulling reducing its naturalisation requirements, some countries are considering going or have already gone the other way. The UK government has announced that it intends to bring in new rules raising the amount of time an immigrant has to live in the country before they can apply for citizenship from five to 10 years, unless they can show "a real and lasting contribution to the economy and society". Belgium meanwhile recently increased the cost of applying for citizenship from €150 to €1,000. Hosted by Prince Albert of Monaco, the final day of the Blue Economy and Finance Forum (BEFF) closed with leaders pledging their support and calling for global responsibility to protect the oceans. William, Prince of Wales, said the challenge of protecting the world's oceans was "like none that we have faced before" and that the clock is ticking: "I believe that urgency and optimism have the power to bring about the action needed to change the course of history. I'm an optimist because as the founder of the Earthshot Prize, I see the incredible examples of the ideas, innovations and technologies that are harnessing the power of the ocean whilst protecting its vitality." "Watching human activity reduce beautiful sea forests to barren deserts, the base of our oceans is simply heart-breaking for many. It is an urgent wake-up call to just what is going on in our oceans, but it can no longer be a matter of out of sight, out of mind. The need to act to protect our ocean is now in full view, as ever," Prince William added. Meanwhile, in his closing speech, French President Emmanuel Macron criticised countries that deny climate change and cut budgets on this matter. 'We've been hearing that, basically, climate change, the threat to biodiversity, the issue of the oceans, all of that, is a matter of opinion," Macron said. He continued: "I'm going to tell you: no, we don't have the right to do that because it's not an opinion, but it's scientifically established." The French president also hinted at potential developments in the near future: "We have a duty to mobilise because the science is clear and the facts are there. There is no inevitability. And so, with a few governments, we will in the coming days make strong decisions and mobilise the international community." A major focus of the weeklong summit was the push to ratify the High Seas Treaty, which would enable conservation in international waters. The forum is the precursor to the United Nations Oceans Conference (UNOC) in Nice, where more than 50 world leaders are expected to attend. The US administration will not send representatives.
France 24
18 hours ago
- France 24
Wagner replaced by Russia's Africa Corp in Mali: diplomatic sources
"Officially, Wagner is no longer present in Mali. But the Africa Corps is stepping up," one diplomatic source in the Sahel region said. A Telegram account affiliated with Wagner said: "Mission accomplished. PMC Wagner is going home." Mali's ruling junta, which seized power in coups in 2020 and 2021, broke off ties with former colonial power France and pivoted towards Russia for political and military support. Wagner, Russia's best-known mercenary group, was disbanded and restructured after its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a mysterious plane crash in August 2023 following a short-lived rebellion against Moscow. Mali has never officially admitted Wagner's presence, insisting it only worked with Russian instructors. France withdrew its 2,400 troops from Mali in 2022 after ties with the junta soured and anti-French sentiment surged among the public. "The Kremlin remains in control," the same diplomatic source added. "Most of the Wagner personnel in Mali, who are originally from Russia, will be reintegrated into Africa Corps and remain in northern regional capitals and Bamako." The Africa Corps is another paramilitary group with links to the Kremlin and seen as the successor to the Wagner group. Like Wagner, its mercenaries are active supporting several African governments. For over three years, Mali had relied on Wagner in its fight against jihadists who have killed thousands across the country. "Wagner yesterday or Africa Corps today, our point of contact remains the same, it is the central power in Russia, that is to say the Kremlin," a Malian security source said Sunday. The paramilitary group's brutal methods on the ground in Mali have been regularly denounced by human rights groups. A UN report accused Mali's army and foreign fighters of executing at least 500 people during a March 2022 anti-jihadist sweep in Moura -- a claim denied by the junta. Western governments believe the foreign fighters were Wagner mercenaries. Last April, bodies were discovered near a Malian military camp, days after the army and Wagner paramilitaries arrested dozens of civilians, most from the Fulani community. Wagner's withdrawal comes amid what the Malian army calls a "resurgence""of jihadist attacks, including two assaults that killed dozens of soldiers and forced troops to abandon a key central base. A European diplomatic source in the Sahel believes Africa Corps will probably do "much more training of Malian soldiers than Wagner did". "Although Wagner claims that its operations and support strengthened the Malian army, Africa Corps will need to continue training and support, especially after the recent wave of attacks against the FAMA (Malian Armed Forces)," said Beverly Ochieng, an analyst at the Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
