Raskrinkavanje.me: The EU did not force Montenegro to open the roe deer and chamois hunting season

Montenegro’s Minister of Ecology, Damjan Ćulafić, said on September 28 that his ministry had been “obliged to act according to the instructions of the European Commission” — and it is precisely this claim that stands at the center of a fact-check by the Raskrinkavanje.me portal, reported by Vijesti. As Vijesti reports, the Ministry of Ecology stated that the European Commission had been involved in drafting the Regulation on hunting seasons, the head of the hunting directorate Miloš Janković defended the regulation on TV Vijesti, while the Ministry of Agriculture defended it by citing scientific principles and European practice. On September 30, Ćulafić appeared on TV Vijesti’s morning program, where he presented the controversy as society’s stress over implementing European standards, saying his ministry had wanted to protect the animals but had had no legal basis to do so.

Under the headline “Dopušteno nije isto što i obavezno” (“Permitted is not the same as obligatory”), Raskrinkavanje.me’s fact-check examines the EU Birds Directive and Habitats Directive and finds that the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) does not appear in Annexes II, IV or V of the Habitats Directive: the absence of a requirement for special protection is not the same as an order to kill the species; there is no European order to open hunting seasons for roe deer and chamois; and under Article 193 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, member states regulate hunting themselves — what is permitted in one member state is not obligatory in another.

As for domestic law, according to the fact-check, the 2025 amendments to the Law on Game and Hunting created the legal space: the amended Article 35 says game for which no hunting season has been set is protected by a hunting ban, but lifting a ban was not an order to open every season; the new regulation, which sets the roe deer and chamois season from October 1 to December 31, is a concrete domestic decision that must be defended with data. For the Balkan chamois, an expert report prepared for the Natura 2000 network in Montenegro had included it; the European Commission, in its reply to parliamentary question E-004107/2021, explained that the Balkan chamois appears in Annex II of the Habitats Directive, whose Article 12 prohibits the deliberate capture and killing in the wild of Annex IV animals, while Article 16 allows derogations only under certain conditions and when there is no satisfactory alternative; the Commission’s guidance on strict protection insists that derogations be justified — a regular hunting season does not become a derogation; the fact that the chamois is hunted in the Alps is not sufficient proof that hunting the Balkan chamois complies with EU law; Annex V expressly excludes it; and Montenegro is not yet an EU member, so the directive does not automatically override the domestic regulation.

Comparisons with Slovenia and Austria, according to the fact-check, do not hold: Slovenia’s Forest Service prepares ten-year and two-year management plans and monitors populations, with the 2021–2030 roe deer guidelines requiring mandatory analysis of numerous indicators, such as the body mass of young animals and forest damage; while a 2010 expert document by Austria’s federal forests warns that roe deer cannot be reliably counted in forest conditions and that sightings alone are not enough — copying the season while bypassing the science is wrong.

Finally, the annual hunting plan is approved by the user of the hunting ground (a hunting organization) with the ministry’s consent — the fact-check asks how independent and thorough state control really is; and the review of European regulations does not confirm that Brussels ordered the hunting of roe deer: the permissibility of hunting, the justification of a specific cull and the obligation to harmonize with the EU are three different things. The claim of a positive opinion from the European Commission remains, according to Raskrinkavanje.me, a matter of documentation, and citizens deserve open documents showing the calculation and the methodology.