The Committee
on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs adopted the own-initiative
report by Roberta ANGELILLI (UEN, IT) in response to the Commission’s
communication on the implementation of an EU strategy on the rights of the
child. It calls for children's rights to be mainstreamed in all external
policies and actions of the EU and reaffirms its denunciation of all forms of
violence against children. MEPs have called for a wide range of measures
aimed at strengthening and completing the strategy proposed by the
Commission. In particular, they call on the Commission to create a specific
budget line for children’s rights, in order to finance work to implement the
strategy or projects such as a European early warning system to combat “child
abductions”.
A strategy
based on 4 pillars: the strategy should be rooted
in the 4 basic principles enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child, which should be better adhered to: 1) protection against all forms of
discrimination, 2) the best interests of the child as a primary
consideration, 3) the right to life and development, 4) the right to express
an opinion and to have that opinion taken into account, in any matter or
procedure affecting the child. The MEPs point out, in particular, that the
strategy should “recognise the important role of family as a basic
institution of society for the survival, protection and development of the
child”.
However, the
strategy proposed by the Commission has proved insufficient for the full
protection of the rights of the child. That is why MEPs have proposed a
series of measures that can be summarised as follows:
- Fight
strongly against violence towards children:
MEPs call for the pure and simple prohibition of all forms of violence
against children; they therefore call for Community legislation that
prohibits all forms of violence, sexual abuse, degrading punishment and
harmful traditional practices (such as genital mutilations and forced
marriages). MEPs condemn all forms of physical, psychological and sexual
violence, torture, child abuse and exploitation, child abduction,
trafficking in or sale of children and their organs, domestic violence,
child pornography, child prostitution, paedophilia, and forced
marriages. In addition to strengthening the legislative process, MEPs
call for the strategy to include preventive measures against violence.
While they applaud the Commission’s plan to introduce an EU-wide child
helpline telephone number, MEPs point to the need for this service to be
free of charge and available 24 hours a day. In addition, Member States
must inform children of their rights through informational measures;
- Fight
against sexual exploitation of children:
MEPs reaffirm that this should be considered equivalent to the crime of
rape insofar as concerns penal sanctions. All the institutions and the
Member States should take a more active part in combating child sexual
exploitation, child trafficking and paedophilia by taking all the
necessary measures to complete the approximation of national legislation
based on common minimum principles. MEPs also call for the buying of sex
from a minor to be criminalised. In this respect, they welcome the
initiative taken by the Commission aimed at excluding websites involved
in online sales of child pornography material from the online payment
system (or introducing other restrictions);
- “Children
at risk”: MEPs propose that the EU define as
'children at risk' all children who are victims of a social situation
that threatens their mental or physical health and/or exposes them to
the risks of delinquency. They call for the adoption of several measures
(information campaigns, exchanges of best practice, and so on) to
prevent children from being put 'at risk', including the prevention of
juvenile delinquency, such as, for example, measures to prevent the sale
of drugs and alcohol. They also call on all Member States to regard a
child who has witnessed domestic violence as a victim of crime;
- Fight
against harmful contents: MEPs call for the
creation of an adequate, effective and proportionate regulation system
in dialogue with the media (public and private TV companies, advertisers
the press, video games, mobile telephones and the Internet) aimed at
prohibiting the broadcasting of harmful images and contents (including
cyberbullying) and the marketing of violent video games. In this
respect, they highlight the growing problem of MMS exchanges of
pornographic or child-abuse related images. They also call for the
systematic blocking of all illegal websites related to the sexual
services of children. In terms of television, MEPs suggest the
tightening of controls over the content of television programmes shown
at a time when the number of child viewers is at its highest;
- Juvenile
delinquency: towards a global strategy? :
For MEPs, juvenile delinquency, which is increasing at an alarming rate,
requires an integrated response, not only at national, but also at
Community level. They believe it necessary to draw up a framework
programme integrated at Community level, grouping together measures
around 1) prevention, 2) social integration of juvenile perpetrators and
3) judicial and extrajudicial intervention. They also call on the
Commission to draw up a comprehensive prevention plan against youth
crime and bullying in schools and the specific problem of youth gangs.
In judicial terms, MEPs call for Member States to favour, where
possible, alternatives to imprisonment;
- Fight
against child poverty and social exclusion:
recalling that 19% of children in the European Union live below the
poverty line, MEPs call for the implementation of a real strategy to
fight against poverty of families. The measures should go from the fight
against malnutrition to the prevention of disease but should also focus
on the fight against ill treatment, which is often linked to the social
situation or legal status of the parents. The EU should, in particular,
set itself the objective of ensuring that there are “no homeless
children or street children in the EU”;
- Fight
against child labour: MEPs stress that it is
essential to ensure that those children who are legally old enough to be
in employment are remunerated on the basis of equal work for equal pay.
They strongly condemn all forms of child labour, slavery and bonded
labour and other forms of work which adversely affect children's health
and safety;
- Towards a
Community instrument on adoptions: Among the
most innovative measures, MEPs call for the creation of a Community
instrument on adoptions, aimed at improving the quality of care with
regard to information services, the preparation of international
adoptions, the processing of international adoption applications and
post-adoption services. For the MEPs, adoption should take place either
within the national country of the child, or by finding a family through
international adoption so that placement in institutions is only used as
a temporary solution;
- Better
protect migrant children and unaccompanied minors: MEPs point out that particular attention should be paid to
the situation of refugee and migrant children and those seeking asylum
so that they can enjoy the same rights as any other child, irrespective
of the legal status of their parents. In particular, special attention
should be paid to unaccompanied minors as they are often victims of
exploitation through organised crime (they represent some 5% of asylum
seekers in Europe).
In addition,
MEPs call for measures aimed at improving the training and education of
children, especially for girls, as well as measures to ensure better
childcare facilities in the Member States. They also call for measures to
protect child soldiers and victims of war.
Moreover, MEPs
call for the possibility to introduce in all international agreements between
the EU and third parties, a specific legally binding clause on the respect of
the rights of the child as defined by international law.
Finally, MEPs
call for very specific measures to ensure that all children are registered at
birth, making it, according to them, a basic legal right such as obtaining a
nationality or an identity at birth.