Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-15-Speech-3-328"
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"en.20061115.24.3-328"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner Frattini, fellow Members, ladies and gentlemen, I want to begin by thanking Mrs Bauer for her sterling report and the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs for its constructive cooperation and for its enhanced cooperation with the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality. I also want to thank Commissioner Frattini.
During the two and a half years that I have sat in the European Parliament, the issue of trafficking in human beings has assumed a prominent place on the political agenda, not only in the European Parliament but also in the Member States and among Europeans. That is a good beginning. I am very pleased that we are united in condemning people trafficking, as we were in condemning it in the context of the football World Cup. I welcome the fact that we are now also including other aspects of people trafficking and that we are agreed that what we are talking about in this case is a modern slave trade, at least 80% of whose victims are women and children.
What worries me is the lack of analysis of what happens to the women and children once they have actually reached the EU. It does not help to be outraged by cross-border trafficking if one does not see, or does not want to talk about, what happens subsequently in the EU. Those who purchase sexual services buy women and children indiscriminately in an equally indiscriminate EU market. Whenever I have met trafficked women, they have said that they have been bought and that they have been sold into prostitution and marketed to clients in a great many EU countries day in, day out, all year round. This has been possible because we, here in the EU, still do not dare to talk about those women and children who are here right now. It is time to change attitudes. The next step is for us to obtain more knowledge. The fact that 50% of those sold into prostitution are children is scandalous. We should be ashamed of ourselves every day for not doing more, because we in the EU have a responsibility for children’s rights.
I am proud to tell you that we in the Socialist Group in the European Parliament are agreed as to how we want to move forward. We wish to set targets, carry out studies and become better informed. We shall then perhaps be able to agree on what is required in the short and long terms. If you other political groups want to know what we are doing, I can tell you that we are preparing the way for a debate on various possible ways of putting an end to people trafficking in Member States, for example through the legalisation of prostitution or, as in Sweden, through a law prohibiting the purchase of sexual services. Why is the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats afraid of university studies? That is something I should like to know.
Merely to be opposed to people trafficking this evening is simply to say that we in the European Parliament are concerned about the matter. We are, however, putting our heads, ostrich-like, in the sand and not assuming responsibility for what is happening to all those women and children who are being exploited here and now. Many people say that we in the EU do little but talk when we should be setting practical targets. The PSE Group and I therefore want us to set the EU a target whereby it is to halve the number of people exposed to people trafficking within ten years.
The PSE Group also supports Amendments 1 to 22 and recital P. We shall abstain in the vote on recital O because we are not adopting a position either in favour of, or against, an individual investigation. On Amendment 25, we shall each vote in our own way. I shall vote in favour of paragraph 1(al) and against Amendment 25, and this on the basis of my political experience of the view taken of the sex trade and prostitution in Sweden. What is most important now is to pursue the 50% reduction in people trafficking and to implement the planned investigation in the EU in 2007. I want to thank all my fellow citizens for this debate. I also want to thank all those who have participated in the debate here in the House, together with the President and Commissioner Frattini."@en1
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