The next hunting calendar
The Lombardy Region has started the procedures for drawing up the next hunting calendar. Work has now started in order to be able to publish the document on 15 June. Federcaccia Lombardia has decided to send a letter to Councilor Rolfi in the Region suggesting a simple but coherent path, that is to prepare a draft calendar in line with the national law 157. Below we publish the document prepared by the lawyer Lorenzo Bertacchi “Dear Assessor, General Manager and Executive, it appears that the procedural process for the preparation of the next hunting calendar has already been started. The initiative is certainly valuable and shared, if timely approval is to be achieved by the deadline of 15 June, and in any case it would be better by mid-May. However, it is hoped that the calendar proposal (which will have to be sent to ISPRA) will only comply with art. 18 of Law 157/92 as regards hunting periods (and in the case of Lombardy to Regional Law 17/04): ISPRA must express its opinion on this proposal and with respect to this proposal ISPRA's indications must be implemented where there is no can justifiably depart.
Current legislation and restrictions
A calendar proposal that incorporates old ISPRA opinions or that takes into account the results of the precautionary phases of the previous judgments and already starts with much more restrictive forecasts than those dictated by current legislation would not be shared or shared. It must not be the Region that has already started with a much more restrictive proposal than the periods envisaged by 157/92, also because ISPRA gives its opinion on what is sent to it and, therefore, where the Body returns a different opinion to other Regions and more permissive than that of the last two or three years, it would in fact be impossible for the Region to realign its proposal for the better, save for enormous risks in the event of an appeal. I want to remind you that very important indications have come from various rulings on the 2022/2023 calendars: the TAR Marche ruling 75/2022 (on the 21/22 calendar), the order of the CDS 5856/22 of 16.12.2022, the ruling of the Umbria TAR 8/2023 rejected the appeals of the LAC and others declaring them inadmissible as they only highlighted the deviation from the opinion of ISPRA, but nothing concrete had been deduced against the reasons given by the Regions.
The appeal of the LAC
The principle whereby ISPRA's opinions are mandatory, but not binding, has been reaffirmed and finally confirmed. The same sentence of the Milan Regional Administrative Court declared the de facto appeal of the LAC inadmissible for the same reason, since it did not challenge the prerequisite deed to the reductive calendar, which in fact contained the reasons for the deviation: and this essentially applied both to closures and openings. In fact, the precautionary order of the TAR had not considered any of the reasons given by the Region so that the negative events that occurred in the past season certainly cannot be assumed as a judicial precedent with which to conform the calendar, since no legal assessment can be drawn from the order in order the legitimacy or otherwise of the acts adopted by the Region. Finally, I believe that starting the procedure for approving the hunting calendar for next season with a more restrictive proposal than the one obtainable from art. 18 of Law 157/92 and LR 17/04 would also bind the choices of the next junta with respect to the future opinion of ISPRA 20 days before the regional elections.
Constitutional judgment
Finally, I must remind you that the next calendar should rely as little as possible on (largely implicit) references to the provisions of Regional Law 17/04: reading the sentence of the Milan Regional Administrative Court, the well-founded suspicion remains that the Judge actually doubted the constitutional legitimacy of the our law, and the constitutionality judgment was avoided only in that the entire appeal was declared inadmissible. I hope you will take the above into your utmost consideration and best regards.” We will try to stay in contact with the offices to understand if our suggestions will be accepted. Surely whoever assumes the role of new regional councilor for agriculture with responsibility for hunting has the right to leave his mark on the calendar, but starting from a text not bound by self-produced limitations. (Source FEDERCACCIA BRESCIA – THOUGHT HUNTERS)