As recalled by Federcaccia Piedmont, Constitutional Court, with sentence no. 7/2019 published on 17 January last, has 'saved' the regional legislative provisions that prohibited the hunting the ptarmigan, the variable hare, the skylark and some species of anatidae. The Constitutional Court has valued its own dating orientation that admitted the faculty of regional laws to extend environmental protection with respect to the minimum standard established by state laws as well as "the particular sensitivity of Piedmontese regional community the constitutional value of the environment and the ecosystem ... in accordance with a specific tradition attentive to the maintenance of existing ecological balances "resulting from the previous laws involving, in part, the aforementioned prohibition and from the referendum initiatives that have affected since 1987 Piedmontese legislation on hunting.
Given that the Court's judgment is limited to the issues raised by the trial judge - in the particular case by the Piedmont Regional Administrative Court -, it should be borne in mind that, in order not to 'lower the flag', the ban already contested can be further challenged before the Regional Administrative Court and then before the same Court with new 'reasons' of constitutional illegitimacy. These can be proposed and, in part, have already been proposed in the two judgments on the appeals relating to the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 hunting calendars. In addition to the observation that the "tradition" of the Piedmont Region does not include the ban on hunting two species of Alpine avifauna (ptarmigan and variable hare) - and significantly the appeal to the TAR concerning the 2016/2017 hunting calendar was proposed, as well as by Federcaccia, by various Piedmontese Alpine Districts, - the ruling does not address two issues of constitutional legitimacy raised by the referral order of the Piedmont TAR.
The first issue is the absence of an adequate technical investigation for a measure that affects environmental matters in contrast with European legislation. This question was declared not unfounded, but inadmissible because the order of the TAR would have proposed it in general terms. The second question concerns the form of the regional intervention limiting hunting to some species and, precisely, the configuration of this as an administrative act - what is the hunting calendar - or as a legislative act - what are the provisions of the contested regional laws -.
The Court does not directly address this last question and limits the scope of a previous sentence (n.20 of 2012) to the necessary characterization as an administrative act of the hunting calendar only, while this sentence, consistently with other rulings, enhances the greater suitability of the administrative act with respect to the legislative act for the regulation of a technical and changing reality such as wildlife sampling and attributes to the State the power to define the form and spaces of regional intervention in environmental matters and, in general, in matters reserved to its legislative power. In perspective, the underlying problem always remains whether the limitation of hunting constitutes an elevation of the level of environmental protection.