EU Wildlife Trade Regulation
EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking
The roadmap clearly indicated its preference for Option 2, all the more as it indicated that the Commission would, in the next few years, reassess the EU approach to environmental crime in general - including trade in waste, in dangerous chemicals, in ozone-depleting substances, illegal logging and illegal fishing etc.
Based on previous experience, on 26 February 2016, the European Commission adopted a Communication on the EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking which sets out a comprehensive blueprint for joint efforts to fight wildlife crime inside the EU, and for strengthening the EU's role in the global fight against these illegal activities. The plan has three main strands – greater enforcement, better cooperation, and more effective prevention. The Action Plan is to be implemented jointly by the EU (Commission services, EEAS, Europol, Eurojust) and its Member States until 2020. The Action Plan was endorsed through Council conclusions in June 2016.
Briefly, the Communication on the EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking comprises a series of measures to be taken by EU institutions and/or Member States. The measures, which are designed to address a complex problem holistically by involving all relevant organisations, are based on three priorities:
- (1) preventing wildlife trafficking and addressing its root causes,
- (2) implementing and enforcing existing rules and combating organised wildlife crime more effectively, and
- (3) strengthening the global partnership of source, consumer and transit countries against wildlife trafficking.
Moreover, in the Commission staff working document “Analysis and the evidence in support of the EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking” accompanying the aforementioned Communication there is a thorough analysis of the wildlife trafficking both at global and EU level highlighting the keys drivers of this phenomenon (rising demand, poverty, corruption, poor governance) and the facilitators of its spread. In addition to this, the Action Plan presents a comprehensive overview of the multi-dimensional impacts of wildlife trafficking: economic impacts, impacts on governance and the rule of law, impacts on national and regional security.
Furthermore, particular emphasis is given to the challenges related to the implementation and enforcement of the existing rules throughout the EU such as public awareness and prioritization, capacity throughout the enforcement chain, coordination within the Member States, capacity to fight organised wildlife crime, enforcement cooperation amongst Member States and international enforcement cooperation.
To sum up, a wide range of issues hinder effective implementation of the EU Wildlife Trade Regulations and other relevant EU rules. An important issue has been the misuse of different “derogations” in the regulations. Criminal groups have taken advantage of the complexity of rules on wildlife trade; in particular, that the same species can be subject to different trade regimes depending on its origin or its products. An example is the trade in hunting trophies, which had been exempt from certain restrictions on trade.
Although the EU wildlife trade Regulations are certainly among the strictest and the best drafted in the world and the EU continuously updates and, where needed, tightens its domestic rules to ensure stricter monitoring, there are still large discrepancies among the 28 MS with regard to legal frameworks, capacities, and resources available to enforce the EU Wildlife Trade Regulations not allowing them to effectively fulfil their obligations.