EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik asserted that the Swedish wolf-hunting licenses violated EU directives, although Carlgren observed that the interpretation of what is allowed is “rigid.”
It can hardly be asserted that the New Age socialist politics of Sweden are insensitive to animal welfare. The fact that there have not been licenses to hunt wolves — costly pests in largely rural Sweden — since 1966 suggests that the policy decision to issue the permits was not made lightly. Observers note that the issue is less about whether governments may enact reasonable regulations to preserve wildlife populations, and more about whether Sweden is still a sovereign nation.
Before its entrance into the massive regional government called the European Union, Sweden was a sovereign nation. In fact, in its past it reserved the right to deal with the Soviet empire or anyone else without regard to its NATO neighbors. During the Second World War, Sweden traded with Germany, as well as any other nation that it could, and preserved its independence, as it did also in the First World War.
Now that Sweden is an EU member-state, such is no longer the case. The bureaucrats in Brussels have been able to do what Hitler could not: make Sweden into a virtual province of a greater Europe.
Spokesman Johan Bostrom of the Swedish National Hunters Association — which has just called for a national fox hunt — decried the influence of European Union bureaucrats on his country’s wildlife policy:
The closer you live to predatory animals, the more critical and negative you are towards them, because they are a threat to your interests.
Not everyone can live in the city and, for people who choose to stay in the countryside, hunters are a big part of their lives.
Therefore decisions about policies around predatory animals should be taken with consideration for those affected by them.…
This is a national issue and not something the EU should rule over.
