An Ecofeminist Approach to EU Biodiversity Law The Case of Hunting

This chapter aims at briefly addressing the issue of hunting as it is regulated in EU biodiversity law – mainly the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) – using legal ecofeminism as method of analysis. It starts from a reflection on ecofeminism as related to hunting, then argues that EU law, including the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (EU Charter FR), is inherently anthropocentric, and highlights the ambiguities of EU biodiversity law – only partly overcome by the most recent Restoration of Nature Regulation (EU) 2024/1991 – with regard to the system of derogations. By referring to a judgment rendered by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) on the conservation of wolves in 2019, which applied the precautionary principle to non-human animals for the first time, this chapter encourages an ecofeminist legal reading of EU biodiversity law. in an attempt to eradicate patterns of discrimination and domi‐ nation present both intra and inter-species and to “learn” how to legally consider non-human animals as part of an environ‐ ment of which we all belong. Ecofeminism can add a valuable dimension to EU biodiversity law.