Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-20-Speech-3-220"
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"en.20070620.23.3-220"2
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"Mr President, I welcome this report and I support the main recommendations made by the rapporteur, Mrs Batzeli. Juvenile crime is indeed one of the challenges we have to address in our modern societies. I will give you an example. A recent study conducted by the European Crime Prevention Network on bullying in schools showed that school bullying was, and still is, a significant problem in Europe, involving between one in seven and one in three students within any given school term.
Finally, these will be complemented for the same period, 2007-2013, by additional and substantial funding in the area of education and training, youth, culture and citizenship. You are, I am sure, familiar with the new Youth in Action programme. As I have already mentioned, education is one of the keys to preventing juvenile crime, so these programmes constitute another important contribution to long-term prevention policies.
As a first step, we need to improve our knowledge of the phenomenon by collecting relevant data. Statistics collected at national level are not easily comparable because of the differences in Member States' legislation and the different ways in which official crime statistics are produced. Considerable work has been done in the past five years by the European Crime Prevention Network to improve the quality and comparability of Member States' criminal justice statistics. Moreover, the Network's website has become an effective tool for providing information, both to practitioners and the general public, on Member States' prevention policies.
In addition, the five-year action plan on statistics, adopted by the Commission last August, will also include and measure juvenile crime and juvenile justice, so that we can have a broader view of this phenomenon at European level. As a result, we will be better able to identify policy needs and to develop indicators, taking into account the current work of international organisations, and will possibly be able to develop a juvenile crime prevention strategy at European level.
Prevention is clearly a key aspect of this area, and I share the rapporteur's view that we cannot merely use repressive measures to deal with this problem. We have to work on an interdisciplinary and multi-institutional basis. In particular, policies such as spatial planning, social housing, social inclusion, education and training, anti-discrimination and anti-racist measures, and integration of migrants, play an important role in preventing crime, in particular juvenile crime.
Moreover, the experience of networks operating in juvenile and urban crime prevention activities proves that all social activities to improve the environment, such as work on public spaces, renovation of squares, lighting, street cleaning, housing policy, facilities and social action services, contribute to an active and long-lasting crime prevention policy for young people.
Crime prevention must also provide an effective contribution to Community safety policies, which aim to avoid the very emergence of crime risks, in particular by fostering healthy and caring societies that offer young people the necessary social environment for a sense of identity, integration and a purposeful life. We have to be aware that Member States and the local authorities bear the main responsibility for implementing effective crime prevention policies. This is even truer for juvenile crime, which typically occurs at local level. The local authorities therefore hold the main responsibility for addressing the problem, ideally supported by the national authorities.
However, cooperation and supportive action at European level can play an important role without replacing Member States' national policies. I have already mentioned the European Crime Prevention Network's important work in collecting and facilitating the exchange of information. However, the network has also played an important role in exchanging experiences and best practice between Member States regarding effective prevention policies. Moreover, a comprehensive comparative study of juvenile crime in all EU Member States, as well as acceding and candidate countries, began last year and will be completed by the end of this year. I will, of course, make it available to you. Such studies will provide a sound basis for future European policy developments in this field.
Over the last few years, substantial financial support has been provided for policy initiatives in crime prevention through various Community-funded programmes. Under the Hippocrates and AGIS programmes, the Commission has co-funded more than 120 transnational projects in the last five years in areas such as the design of safe urban environments, the exchange of best practice on juvenile and urban crime and the development of good practices in the juvenile justice system.
In addition, in order to respond to the need for firm action against violence among children and young people, including bullying in schools, the Commission has funded, and will continue to fund, several projects regarding peer violence and bullying through the Daphne II programme, which will be succeeded by Daphne III. The emphasis on bullying in schools has increased in recent years, as already mentioned, and there are several interesting projects ongoing. The new generation of financial programmes under the new financial perspective in the field of justice, freedom and security, particularly the programme 'prevention and fight against crime', will, along with Daphne III, offer substantial financial support to national and transnational projects in this field."@en1
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