Il Lombardy Regional Administrative Court, Section I of Milan, following an appeal presented by the LAC against some acts of the Regional Council and of the Lombardy regional council, with ordinance no. 00673 of 25 March 2022, declared the question of the constitutional legitimacy of art. 43, paragraph 3 of Regional Law 26/93 and of art. 10, paragraph 3 of the law 157/92 (consequently, also of the art.13, paragraph 3, letter a) of the regional law 26/93), ordering the suspension of the trial and the immediate transmission of the documents to the Constitutional Court, for the judgment of merit.
In this case, the contested regional provision provides that mountain passes (within a thousand meters from which, as is known, pursuant to state law, hunting is prohibited) must be identified exclusively in sector A (greater protection) of the faunal area of the Alps; the contested state regulation, on the other hand, prescribes the percentages of agro-forestry-pastoral territory to be allocated to the protection of wildlife, which in the Alps area must be between 10 and 20% and in the remaining territory between 20 and 30%, including the territories in which hunting is prohibited also due to other laws or provisions.
The long and complex judicial affair, of which this ordinance is currently the last landing, goes back even to a administrative litigation at the time triggered against a resolution of the Provincial Council of Brescia in March 2009, with which the mountain passes were identified and established in the provincial territory with the relative prohibition of hunting. After several rulings by the Lombardy Regional Administrative Court, del Council of State (last in 2020) and finally, following the adoption of further acts by the Giunta and the Regional Council in the course of 2021, we now arrive at this ordinance which goes far beyond the merits of the contested regional regulations, leaving the Court with theto the same legitimacy of one of the cornerstones of wildlife-hunting planning for all Regions.
It does not escape how the outcome of this judgment will be vital to the future planning and, therefore, for the very eventuality that the Regions no longer have to respect the maximum areas of TASP to be allocated to the protection of wildlife, with the consequence of relegating hunting to totally irrelevant, unproductive and no interest from the faunal point of view. It will also be the first case in which the Court will also be called upon to rule on the new contents of art. 9 of the Constitution, according to which, after a very recent amendment “La Repubblica…. protects the environment, biodiversity and ecosystems, also in the interest of future generations. State law governs the methods and forms of animal protection. "