Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-06-Speech-2-316"
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".
Mr President, the main purpose of this recommendation is to protect minors on the Internet. The Internet is a powerful tool, without borders, open to all, and it gives everyone access to a pool of knowledge and documents and an ability to exchange information that have never been equalled in the history of humanity. In just a few years, the Internet has changed the face of the world.
It is the legislature’s duty, however, to prevent this powerful communication tool from becoming a harmful, or even dangerous, tool, particularly for minors, who are using it more and more frequently. Indeed, young children now spend more time in front of the computer than in front of the television. They do not know it, but they are not always safe on the Net. They are faced with new dangers that could cause them deep and irreversible trauma.
I would like to give you a few statistics regarding this situation, which is becoming increasingly worrying. More than one in three children have accidentally stumbled on violent, pornographic or paedophilic images on the Internet. There are currently about 260 million pages on the web with pornographic content, and 470 paedophilia sites. More than 1.5 million images have been identified on the Net of children, very young children, being sexually exploited or abused. Between 2003 and 2004, Internet child pornography grew by 70%. On average, it takes just 30 seconds for a young person connected to a chat room to be approached sexually by a predator, in other words by an adult pretending to be a teenager for the sole purpose of getting the photo and address of a young surfer and a meeting with him or her. The paedophilia business generates 20 billion dollars a year worldwide. In France alone, it represents a turnover of EUR 50 million a year.
Faced with such a situation, we must not and we cannot remain inactive. It is time to protect children and the most vulnerable from all harmful content, whether legal or illegal. It is time to ensure that all those involved take responsibility for what is happening on the Internet. This is all the more necessary now that new technologies are omnipresent and frequently freely available in schools, homes, cybercafés and, soon, on mobile telephones. These are all new ways for young people to avoid any kind of supervision. Today, self-regulation is no longer enough. We must go further by calling on all those involved, politicians, the industry and educators, to take responsibility.
First of all, politicians have a responsibility. It is up to governments and ministers for education to implement specific Internet education programmes aimed at all children, teachers and parents. It is also up to them to organise information campaigns to alert public opinion to the dangers posed by the Internet. They should also increase the availability of hotlines for reporting harmful content and encourage the establishment of a European toll-free number accessible to all. Finally, we propose that the Commission should consider creating a domain name ‘
kid’ reserved solely for content for children.
Next, the industry has a responsibility. The existence of charters, codes of conduct and quality initiatives is no longer enough. It is high time that hosts provided easy-to-use parental software and offered subscriptions to access services intended specifically for children, with automatic filtering at source. It is high time, too, that creators and producers were compelled to provide a description of their sites so that they could be classified.
Finally, educators, in other words parents and teachers, have a responsibility. Children of younger and younger ages are faced with the information and images carried by the Internet. Only the inclusion of an educational approach as part of schools’ curricula will enable improved use of the Internet. Needless to say, this would require training and information for teachers, and also for parents.
Those, in essence, are our proposals. However, this recommendation also seeks to make a right of reply available in all online media. This right of reply already operates satisfactorily for the written press and audiovisual services, but not for the online media. In most Member States, no provisions are currently laid down. We therefore need to establish minimum principles at European level for exercising the right of reply for all new electronic communications media.
Thus, this recommendation will make it possible, thanks to the support of Parliament, which I would like to thank for the quality of its work, to improve Internet usage and will, I hope, be able to restore confidence. Europe is currently experiencing a major crisis, a crisis in its institutions, its operation, its budget, its identity and its values. However, I hope that, at least, when it comes to the future of our children, we will rediscover our ability to take action and to bring about the necessary changes to protect them. It is the least we can do for them."@en1
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