EU officials back new child alert system

THERE should be a EU-wide child abduction alert system, electronically linking police in all member states if a young person goes missing, justice ministers have agreed.

But they were less willing to approve an “alert-abduction” system similar to that in Belgium and France where the media, posters and electronic signs with photographs and descriptions of missing children and possible abductors are broadcast immediately.

The disappearance of four-year-old Madeleine McCann five months ago from a holiday apartment in Portugal pushed the issue onto the EU justice ministers’ agenda when they met in Lisbon yesterday.