General legal framework for the preservation of European wildlife and natural habitats

Abstract

In the European Union territory, a number of legal sources for the protection of wildlife and their natural habitats have been applied. On one hand, there are legal documents, having different legal strength, which provide protection to all wildlife species and their natural habitats in a general manner. On the other hand, there are a number of regulations, also having different strength, which only protect individual components of wildlife or only treat individual aspects within the domain of their legal protection. Obviously, the relevant provisions of the Law on the Protection of Nature, the Ordinance on the Ecological Network and the Rulebook on Habitat Types, the Criteria for the Selection of Habitat Types, on Sensitive, Endangered, Rare and Priority for Protection Habitat Types and on the Protection Measures for their Conservation of the Republic of Serbia indicate their conformity, in terms of their contents, with the Directive 92/43/EEC to a great extent. However, a great deal of work lies ahead since the Republic of Serbia must, by the time it enters the European Union, enlist and categorise, in accordance with the Criteria stated in the Directive, the natural types of habitats, referred to in Annex I, and the habitats of species, referred to in Annex II to this legal source, in order to become a part of Natura 2000 - a European ecological network. Meanwhile, the Serbian norm setter must eliminate the observed instances of incompleteness in the following relation: the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats and the Law on Nature Protection and 'fight down' the practice of taking over specific formulations from one legal source and entering them into other legal sources, as well as needlessly repeating the clarifications of meaning of specific terms in numerous legal documents.

Keywords

• wildlife
• natural habitats
• European Union's legislation
• Serbian regulations