President Nicușor Dan has challenged at the Constitutional Court (CCR) the law that would significantly increase the number of brown bears allowed to be hunted nationwide. He argued that the legislation contains incomplete monitoring and prevention mechanisms and could violate European Union environmental rules.

The law, adopted by Parliament, would approve the hunting of 859 brown bears nationwide in 2026 as a prevention measure, along with an additional 110 bears under intervention quotas aimed at preventing attacks on people and property. This would significantly increase Romania’s annual hunting quotas compared to 2024, when authorities approved the hunting of 426 bears under prevention quotas and 55 under intervention quotas.

According to the Presidential Administration, the level of preventive hunting could be considered disproportionate if authorities cannot scientifically demonstrate that Romania’s brown bear population is excessively large and that alternative measures are insufficient to maintain ecological balance and public safety, Agerpres reported. 

President Nicușor Dan also argued that the law does not explicitly require authorities to verify whether satisfactory alternatives exist before bears are killed, a condition imposed by the EU Habitats Directive.

The complaint further states that the Parliament effectively replaced what should have been a technical-administrative decision of the executive branch by directly setting hunting quotas for all 528 hunting grounds in the country.

The president additionally criticized the lack of sanctions for violating the ban on killing female bears accompanied by cubs younger than two years old.

“A rule that prohibits a behavior (the killing of female bears accompanied by cubs), but does not provide a sanction for violating the prohibition, ceases to be a binding legal norm and becomes merely a moral recommendation. Without classifying the violation of the prohibition as either an administrative offense or a criminal act and establishing a sanction, the rule lacks coercive force, violating the requirement for the quality of the law, which implies, among other things, that those subject to it must be able to foresee the consequences of failing to comply,” Nicușor Dan said.

The presidency also warned that approving 859 preventive hunting permits without a real-time digital monitoring system makes compliance with the national quota impossible to verify.

“In the absence of a mechanism that automatically blocks the extraction of bears once the quota assigned to a hunting ground has been reached, exceeding the limit is implicitly allowed,” the complaint added.

Romania is home to a large population of bears. According to preliminary results from an April 2025 study by the Ministry of Environment, the country’s brown bear population is estimated at between 10,419 and 12,770 animals.

Bear sightings are not uncommon in mountain areas in Romania, including popular destinations such as the Transfăgărășan road, especially as the animals have become used to tourists giving them food, despite the authorities' repeated calls to avoid any contact with the wild animals and the risk of being fined for doing so. This sometimes resulted in tourists being injured or even killed by the bears they stopped to photograph or feed.

Plus, hungry wild animals leave the forests to search for food in nearby mountain towns, often drawn by waste or orchards - which sometimes leads to human-bear conflicts.

Environmental groups have repeatedly argued that hunting alone is not a sufficient solution to lower the number of bear attacks or sustainably manage the population.

irina.marica@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Fernbach Antal/Dreamstime.com)