The Spanish presidency
informed justice ministers about the state of play concerning a directive on
combating the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child
pornography.
In March 2010,
the Commission adopted its proposal on the file. Once adopted, the new rules
will replace framework decision 2004/68/JHA. The goal is to further
approximate national legislation and to improve international law enforcement
and judicial cooperation.
Among the
outstanding issues are:
- the
definition of child pornography;
- the
categorisation of offences;
- instigation,
aiding and abetting, and preparatory acts for offences of this kind;
- the
criminalisation of intentional access to child pornography by
computerised means;
- how to deal
with unintended access to web sites;
- the length
of sentences;
- the
extension of territorial jurisdiction;
- the blocking
of websites with child pornography content as a complementary measure to
the efforts to eliminate the source content;
- including
unreal characters (images, cartoons, etc.) within the concept of child
pornography (in this respect, the Commission has noted that the aim is
to criminalise images which reproduce reality);
- assessing
and offering rehabilitation programmes to the perpetrators of such
crimes.