This week will see a decisive test of the European Commission’s plan to ban the use of highly toxic lead shot in hunting and fishing, as Italian MEP Pietro Fiocchi mounts a last-ditch challenge to restrictions he argues unfairly target traditional hunting and fishing practices.
The European Parliament will vote on Tuesday on Fiocchi’s proposal to reject a ban on lead fishing tackle, while national delegates will decide behind closed doors two days later whether to endorse a separate ban on lead shot used for hunting.
The Commission published two proposals in 2025 aimed at reducing lead pollution, with an estimated 44,000 tonnes per year being fired into or discarded in the environment. Sport shooting accounts for over half of the pollution, hunting for just under a third, and anglers and commercial fishers for the remaining 11% in the form of weights and pellets.
The first restriction, dealing specifically with fishing tackle, was adopted in April following approval by national delegates on a committee tasked with examining proposals to control substances under the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation.
But Fiocchi, a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, is using the European Parliament’s three-month scrutiny period to try to force a rejection of the applicable secondary legislation . The assembly’s environment committee is due to vote on Tuesday.
In his draft resolution, the ECR lawmaker writes that “the proposal is clearly disproportionate to the scale of the problem and the objective pursued.”
The process to prohibit lead shot in shooting and hunting is less advanced, with the REACH Committee due to vote on the Commission’s restriction proposal on Thursday behind closed doors.
Statement of intent
It remains unclear whether Fiocchi also plans to challenge that restriction if it is agreed by the committee this week; he declined to answer Euractiv‘s repeated requests for confirmation. But the signals suggest this is highly likely.
He warned as early as 2023, in the far-right daily Secolo d’Italia, of possible “undeclared objectives” behind the ban, “such as putting an end to hunting and fishing in Europe”.
In March, Fiocchi asserted that behind the two restriction proposals lay “above all, a targeted attack on the traditional forms of hunting practised in the countries of southern Europe”.
The ban on the sale of lead tackle for use in commercial fishing comes with a range of transition periods: six months for light dropshot sinkers, three years for other sinkers and lures weighing 50g or less, and five years for larger tackle weighing up to one kilogramme.
Still, Fiocchi reckons that bringing the sector into compliance could cost €9.3 billion over 20 years, and that alternatives are not yet commercially available.
Family business
Fiocchi, a member of Giorgia Meloni’s nationalist Fratelli d’Italia party, is a former executive at Fiocchi Munizioni, one of the world’s leading ammunition manufacturers.
Founded in 1876, the company has become a leading manufacturer of small-calibre ammunition for hunting, shooting, security and defence, employing more than 1,000 people worldwide and generating consolidated revenue of around €220 million in 2023.
Before being elected to the European Parliament in 2019, Fiocchi served as chairman of Fiocchi USA for 20 years. The sale of the company to the Czech defence giant CSG in 2025, however, rules out the possibility of a conflict of interest.
Still, Fiocchi has not hesitated to use his new role as an MEP in Brussels to champion a sport, and a legacy, he clearly deems worth defending.
In March, the Italian politician said, after lobbying governments ahead of the vote on fishing tackle, that he had “once again done everything in my power to oppose it, by trying to raise awareness amongst the delegations from the various member states”.
His efforts evidently were not as successful as he might have hoped. Although committee votes are held in secret, analysis of the data publicly available shows that Italy – and by extension, the Meloni government – voted in favour of prohibiting lead fishing tackle.
What’s next?
Environmentalists will be keenly watching the votes this week. Campaign group BirdLife Europe has urged lawmakers to support the bans, arguing that, in addition to protecting wildlife that frequently ingest lead, the prohibition could shield millions of European citizens from “one of Europe’s last sources of lead pollution”.
“Non-toxic alternatives are widely available,” BirdLife wrote. “There is no excuse for delay,” it said, calling on MEPs to “support this long-overdue restriction”.
It remains to be seen what position Italy will take now that the issue is out in the open, and the position of the conservative European People’s Party, the largest group in the Parliament, will be decisive in the forthcoming parliamentary votes.
(rh, aw)
