The EU Commission will propose a legislative change, which the European Parliament and the EU Council will have to adopt. Each member state will manage the containment according to flexible criteria.

The protection status of the wolf has changed: from “strictly protected” to “protected”. The vote of the Permanent Committee of the Bern Convention decided today. With the decision, the wolf is in fact downgraded as a species. The measure is taken at a time of significant repopulation of carnivores, which, increasingly approaching population centers, increasingly raid livestock farms.

At a procedural level, after 7 March 2025, when the resolution will enter into force, the European Union will be able to adapt the corresponding annexes of the Habitats Directive. The Commission will propose a legislative amendment aimed at this purpose, which will have to be adopted by the European Parliament and the Council. Each country will then have the power to manage with greater flexibility the local populations of wolves, which remain a protected species and therefore conserved, but, precisely, within the context of a broader general balance for all activities.

According to the italian Minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry Francesco Lollobrigida, the downgrading of the wolf's protection status is "great news, the result of a widely shared position of the European Union, which Italy, among the first nations, has urged".

"A decision", the minister declared on his Telegram channel, "which, based on scientific data, will allow us to carry out a rationalization activity to guarantee the species and the productive activities that, in many areas of Italy, have been put in difficulty. Extensive breeding, tourism and the very safety of animals and people", continues Lollobrigida , "have been endangered for too long by an excessive presence of large carnivores".

"Finally we are returning to reasoning with pragmatism, overcoming delirious ideological positions, harmful to the environment and to human activities", concludes Lollobrigida , hoping that "we can now work quickly to ensure the protection of the species within a broader framework of guarantees for all activities".