Plans to restrict sale of violent computer games

European Union justice and interior ministers today debated whether to set an EU-wide age limit on sales of violent video and computer games.

The EU must regulate the sale of games that glorify violence, now easily accessible to children, Luxembourg's Justice Minister Luc Frieden said.

"Access to children should be cut off," Frieden told reporters at the start of the second day of talks among EU justice ministers. "We have to ban some games."

Amid a recent spate of violent attacks by teenagers that authorities partially blame on violent games, EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini has pushed EU governments to take action.

Frattini has called on EU ministers to urge Internet companies, game makers and retailers to participate in voluntary self-regulation to prevent the sale of such products to children.

He has also suggested that EU ministers adopt EU-wide labelling rules. Several EU countries, including Germany and Britain, already label the most violent games.

"The EU has to send out the message that we have to protect our children," Spain's Justice Minister Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar said.

EU officials want all 27 EU member nations to adopt uniform labels with age restrictions and parental advisory warnings. However, EU officials have said it would be left to national authorities to decide on how tough the measures should be.

The call to act on violent games targeted at children is being backed by Germany, which holds the EU presidency.

Britain, Greece, Finland, Spain and France also back co-ordinated EU policy on the issue.

Frattini and German ministers are keen to take action after an 18-year-old went on a rampage in a German high school last November, shooting five people before committing suicide.

Authorities blamed his attack on the teen's love for violent computer games.

EU ministers also were to continue discussions on sharing cross-border criminal data from national registers.

The ministers on Monday backed efforts to give police EU-wide access to national databases containing fingerprints, DNA samples and license plate information.

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said there was "broad consensus" on expanding a seven-nation data-sharing pact to include all 27 EU members.

Schaeuble added that the pact could also be used to sign a similar data-sharing accord with the US as part of efforts to track down terror groups and serious crime suspects.

The existing seven-nation pact, called the Pruem Treaty and signed in May 2005, includes Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Austria. It allows police direct access to genetic records, fingerprints and traffic offences across the seven nations.

Schaeuble said several EU ministers raised concerns over allowing other national police forces direct access to their database networks.

Britain, Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic questioned the cost of adapting their databases to join the pact, diplomats and officials said.