EU Fights Child Internet Images
Strasbourg -- Wednesday 14 September, 2011
One of the most abhorrent crimes is the abuse of children.
A European Parliament report on tackling the use of indecent images of children on the internet is set to get the green light and become law.
The number of web sites devoted to child pornography is growing and it is estimated that 200 images containing child pornography are put into circulation every day.
The new Directive will require far-reaching measures against child pornography on the net.
Member States will have to ensure the “prompt removal of web pages containing or disseminating child pornography hosted in their territory”.
They will also have to do their best to co-operate with third countries to obtain the removal of such pages if hosted outside the EU.
I took part in the negotiations as a Shadow Rapporteur on the report and I am pleased that the often complex and technical negotiations are bearing fruit.
Although there has been much made of the different approaches by Member States (between blocking and outright removal), I think the real success of the work we have done will be to improve the cooperation between public authorities across the EU.
This will mean that the lists of offending websites are as comprehensive as possible.
It will also mean that the system is more efficient, resulting in faster removal of these sites.
But we should also tackle the root cause and pursue the offenders - I hope this will be made easier with the common approach.
The Directive outlines an approach to non-EU based sites - here the emphasis will switch to blocking as it is often trickier to remove the images.
The vote on the agreement reached between the Parliament and the Council is expected to take place later this month.
The new rules will then come into force quickly, replacing those drawn up in 2004.
