Forced to cooperation: how supra-national legal frameworks affect intra-national wild-life conservation borders

The conservation and sustainable use of commonly accessible natural assets is often effected by lacking coordination among and within nations. Such conflicts within national and the subnational government levels are often... [ view full abstract ]

The conservation and sustainable use of commonly accessible natural assets is often effected by lacking coordination among and within nations. Such conflicts within national and the subnational government levels are often already mitigated through various coordination rules. Comparative studies in a cross-national context are rare, within the EU as well as in Austria. This contribution assesses a situation without such rules and where the subnational government units are sovereign in their respective legislation and implementation of wildlife law. It intends to show how EU-wildlife-law even forces these units to cooperate, despite their sovereignty and despite the sovereignty of the EU-Member States related to their internal organization. This will be presented by means of the assessment of a – realworld – situation in Austria. There, no binding coordination mechanisms are generally and durably established in the wildlife legislation, neither among subnational units themselves nor regarding their relationship with the federal level. Each of the nine Austrian provinces respectively has for its territory the sole competence of nature conservation, hunting and fishery legislation and its implementation, also with regard to the transposition and administration to the relevant aquis (“EU-28+9”). On the one hand, even the Court of Justice of the EU emphasizes the sovereignty of the EU-Member States related to their internal organization in terms of distribution of legislative and administrative powers. On the other hand, EU-law addresses Member States as such and requires based on effet utile the goals of the EU-Directives including the wildlife relevant Birds Directive and Habitats Directive to be achieved. The analysis will show based on different transboundary cases regarding habitat conservation (Art. 6/3-6/4 Habitats Directive) and species conservation (Art. 9 Birds Directive) how the effet utile influences Member States’ internal organization sovereignty, leading to cooperation duties among yet sovereign subnational government units. In summary, the contribution provides innovative insights into and perspectives for the sustainable development of transboundary wildlife law in sovereignty-regional integration contexts.

Keywords: Souvereinity, supranational, wildlife-regulation, transboundary, EU-law