Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-11-Speech-1-080"
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"en.20010611.4.1-080"2
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". – Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Commission I congratulate Mrs Karamanou and Mrs Klamt for their excellent reports and thank all those of you who have been raising this very important issue for several years.
The Commission cannot therefore agree with the relevant amendments but would be willing to consider an age limit set at a higher level than in the original proposal, that is, changing the age limit from the age of 10 to 12 years. Secondly, as regards the amendments concerned with jurisdiction and extradition, it should be observed that the articles of the proposal are modelled on provisions reflecting the state of play in regard to specific instruments in this field. The Commission cannot therefore agree to the suggested amendments. At the same time, we are willing to consider these issues in a broader context. However, as regards the extension of the jurisdiction article to habitual residents, the Commission would be prepared to take that amendment on board, as it would all other amendments to the recitals of the proposal.
In conclusion, I sincerely hope that it will be possible to reach a political agreement in the Council as far as sanctions are concerned. I share the view of those who say that in reality the application of penal law differs in our 15 Member States. That is true. We must not, however, give the wrong message to those who traffic in human beings by not having common sanctions at European level. It would seriously defeat our common aim if we were not capable of agreeing on common sanctions when it comes to trafficking in human beings. We have already achieved agreement when it comes to counterfeiting the euro, when it comes to money-laundering, or when it comes to smugglers' and carriers' liability. I do not see any justification for not reaching political agreement on common sanctions on trafficking in human beings for purposes of economic exploitation and sexual exploitation.
I would like to start with Mrs Klamt's report. The Commission's proposals should be viewed in the context of a more comprehensive policy that includes the closer police and judicial cooperation in the fight against organised crime; the contributions that important Community programmes like STOP and DAPHNE have given to this issue; and, last but not least, the Forum on the Prevention of Organised Crime recently launched by the Commission, which includes a specific workshop on trafficking in human beings.
However, prevention is only one side of the coin. Providing victims with assistance and protection is equally important. I would like to remind you that in March the Council adopted a Framework Decision on the standing of victims in criminal proceedings. That decision addresses several important issues taken up in some of Parliament's amendments. Furthermore, I would like to reiterate that the Commission will be submitting a proposal on temporary residence permits for those victims of trafficking prepared to cooperate in investigations against their exploiters. Such an initiative should be autonomous and provide a platform for more structured assistance and protection, by clarifying the status of victims vis-à- vis residence. Given the circumstances, and bearing in mind the specific nature of the legal instruments under discussion, the Commission shares the underlying aims of several of the amendments put forward by Parliament. However, we will be unable to accept those that fall within the scope of other Framework Decisions – the Framework Decision on the standing of victims in criminal proceedings, for instance – or those whose detailed nature is incompatible with a specific instrument such as a Framework Decision.
I regret to say that, although I wholly favour the idea of creating a fund to protect the victims, such a fund would run counter to the subsidiarity principle that we need to honour in specific instruments such as Framework Decisions. Having said that, the Commission accepts most of the amendments to the recitals, including those inserting references to the Charter of Fundamental Rights and to underline the work carried out by Parliament over the years. The Commission also fully shares the objectives of the amendments on the abuse of vulnerability, on vulnerability and debt bondage, and on vulnerability, physical and mental disabilities and illegal residence. It can also support the amendments on transportation in inhuman conditions as an aggravated circumstance.
As far as the Klamt report is concerned, I would like to emphasise that the sterling efforts and commitment of the Swedish Presidency have culminated in a basic agreement on several provisions, but sadly, no consensus has been achieved on the severity of sanctions. The Commission has not, therefore, submitted a revised proposal. We will await Parliament's opinions and then incorporate them into our own position.
Let me now turn to Mrs Karamanou's report. I would like to praise her approach and to add that, indeed, action should always take practical as well as legal form. For those actions to succeed it will be vital to harmonise criminal law and criminal regulations relating both to sanctions and to the definitions of child pornography, and child pornography on the Internet in particular.
Here again, we share the objectives of some of the amendments that have been put forward, but we sincerely feel that they come under the provisions of other legal instruments such as the Framework Decisions on the standing of victims in criminal proceedings. Regarding the amendments concerned with the definition of child pornography and the offence of child pornography, we believe that the definitions decided by the Union should be as much in line as possible with the definitions taken on board by the draft Convention on Cyber Crime drawn up by the Council of Europe. Coherence between these two instruments is, in my opinion, extremely important.
The Commission would like to highlight its position on two sets of amendments that are particularly difficult from a political point of view.
First I turn to the amendments suggesting that sexual exploitation of persons below the age of 16 years should be regarded as an aggravated offence. This involves very complicated issues of a legal nature, not least as regards the relation between national law and European Union law – subsidiarity. Under many Member States' criminal law, sexual exploitation is an offence when it involves a person below the age of sexual consent, as soon as the occurrence of a sexual act has been established. This means, in turn, that the amendments setting the age limit for an aggravated offence at 16 will undoubtedly interfere not only with the systematic approaches in the Member States but also with national considerations on the age of consent. We have no legal title to harmonise the issue of the age of consent to sexual relations."@en1
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