Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-30-Speech-4-084"
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"en.20000330.4.4-084"2
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"The text we are debating today certainly affects us more than most since it is about protecting children against sex tourism.
The European Commission has drawn up a report of the measures which have been taken in this field. In view of the results, it is clear that the European Union and its Member States must increase their efforts to combat sex tourism and the exploitation of children. The Member States must pass extra-territorial legislation allowing them to carry out investigations, prosecute and punish any individual guilty of crimes committed abroad and linked to child sex abuse.
We must go even further and establish measures such as a coherent child protection policy by creating a new general legal base in the context of the next revision of the Treaty, with adequate Community funding. I also think it is essential to incorporate the rights of the child into the Charter of Fundamental Human Rights.
In conjunction with this, we must take action at grass-roots level by encouraging travel agencies, tour operators, transport and advertising companies to set up self-regulation systems designed to combat child sex tourism, and by creating free helplines for children in distress in every Member State.
Exemplary penalties must be imposed on the people guilty of such monstrous behaviour. The fact is, when people are in a foreign country, in an unfamiliar region, they can act in complete anonymity and convince themselves that child abuse is less reprehensible in a different social and cultural context, and that the moral principles in force in their own country do not apply. That is intolerable! We must not be blind to the fact that the Internet facilitates these ‘practices’. This is why Parliament calls on the Commission to assess the link between child pornography on the Internet and the growth in sex tourism, and to propose practical measures against the phenomenon!
It is also essential to recognise that prostitution in general in the developing countries is very often due to poverty, affecting children, women and men. We must also fight on those grounds because there will always be unscrupulous people around to exploit human poverty.
I want to end by reaffirming that children, this world’s future, are one of the most vulnerable groups in the population, with specific needs that have to be protected. We must never forget that every individual’s childhood and the particular circumstances of their family and social circle in large measure determines their adult life. Consequently, all the European Union and Member State institutions must be inspired in their action by the protection of children’s rights as recognised in the United Nations Convention of 20 November 1989."@en1
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