Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-10-26-Speech-3-318-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20111026.22.3-318-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I firstly wanted to outline our oral question to the Commission. It is, above all, a political act, an acknowledgement to the Commission that it is showing great interest in the issue of protecting and affirming children’s rights. Hence, on 15 February this year, Ms Reding presented a Communication on the European Union’s Programme on Children’s Rights, a package of 11 concrete actions that the Commission intends to adopt in the coming years to ensure greater legal protection for children, so that all 27 Member States will ensure justice for children.
I will list some of the measures. First of all, the proposal for a directive on the rights of victims, which is already in discussion in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and has among its objectives the protection of child victims in criminal proceedings. Other important points include the protection of Roma children, the activation in all free states of telephone helplines and early warning systems for missing children, not to mention a commitment to open a sort of information desk for children on the Parliament and EU website. These are some of the points that make up the package I mentioned. It is important to be aware of the extraordinary efforts that the Commission and individual Commissioners are putting into the protection of children’s rights, both within the European Union and beyond.
I will now set out the proposal for a directive, for which I am the rapporteur, on combating the sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. I should first of all like to thank the shadow rapporteurs, Ms Sippel, Ms Lambert, Ms Wikström, Mr Triantaphyllides and Mr Kirkhope, who have helped me on this journey, which has not always been easy.
Above all I should like to thank Ms Malmström, who was a strong supporter of this directive, the Council, the Hungarian and the Polish rotating presidencies, which followed this legislative process very carefully, as well as all the non-governmental organisations (NGOs), beginning with UNICEF, ECPAT, Save the Children, and all the main NGOs that followed and assisted us in putting this directive together. To reiterate: this is the second criminal law measure since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, following the directive on human trafficking, and the first legislative measure on a specific area of criminal law, namely the protection of children against sexual exploitation, abuse and child pornography. Among other things, the directive brings together all the outcomes of a resolution that was adopted in Parliament in 2009 and takes the Lanzarote Convention as its point of reference.
A few key points: How do we define these crimes? The text defines the crimes of sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, child pornography and child grooming for sexual purposes. We added a specific definition of child pornography, making reference to the Lanzarote Convention. Furthermore, uniform and effective punishments are introduced across the European Union and aggravating circumstances are specified, in particular when a child is in a vulnerable situation, disabled or if the crime has perhaps been committed by a relative or someone who has any case abused their position of trust and authority. Turning now to disqualification, anyone who has committed a crime and been definitively convicted shall have their actions restricted and will also be banned from carrying out voluntary work with children. We have provided for the seizure and confiscation of assets and proceeds connected to the crimes set out in this directive.
Much has also been done in the areas of assistance for victims, in order to avoid so-called double victimisation; sex tourism; grooming, by which I mean the online solicitation of children; and, lastly, we have provided for the removal of all online child pornography. I will conclude by saying that obviously this is not a matter of censoring freedom of expression and freedom of opinion: only content that objectively contains images of violence and exploitation will be removed, that much is certain."@en1
|
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples