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.

Portuguese police have been criticised for not alerting agencies in other countries quickly enough about the disappearance of the British child.

But not all countries have a central alert system and ministers agreed to investigate the issue at national level and see how they can create such a system and ensure it is compatible with those in other member states.

Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesman for Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini, said it would not involve setting up a new institution, but would mean faster and closer co-operation between police throughout the EU.

They also hope the measures will help reduce the number of children abducted across borders each year, often by parents and will tackle the problem of trafficked children, which, according to the UN, now amounts to a million a year.

However, any automatic EU-wide rapid public alert system was vetoed by a number of countries, including Germany whose Minister Brigitte Zypries said it would be “totally counter-productive”.

“It does not make sense to show the faces of three to five children every day on television because this has a dulling effect”, she said adding that publishing ads in Denmark for a child kidnapped in the south of Italy would not be useful.

Instead the ministers agreed that if there were to be public campaigns, it should be done on a case-by-case basis with the judicial authorities deciding which one to publicise.

The ministers asked the commission to come up with new measures to better protect young people when they are using the internet and to prevent paedophiles from abusing children through the internet.