Swedish licensed hunting of the wolf under the Habitats Directive. Does Swedish hunting law live up to the requirements of EU biodiversity law?

Abstract

This thesis analyses the Swedish legislation relating to the licensed hunting of the wolf, under the lens of the Habitats Directive. This analysis is underpinned by the Environmental Law Method in order to internalize ecological knowledge in the legal discourse, since environmental law should be constructed on the full understanding of its object, that is, the environment. In this sense, two main questions are addressed in this thesis: (i) what does Favourable Conservation Status (FCS) imply, as required by the Habitats Directive, and whether the Swedish wolf can be considered to have reached it, and, depending on the answer, (ii) if Swedish licensed hunting of the wolf is in accordance with the requirements of strict protection and derogations regime of the Habitats Directive. The main findings relate, on one hand, to a deficient integration of scientific evidence in the hunting policies and regulations that implement hierarchically superior environmental norms, stemming from the Habitats Directive and the Swedish Environmental Code, and also to an apparent intrusion of political reasonings in the legal deliberations of the national courts, which aren’t necessarily aligned with the jurisprudence of the CJEU.