Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-12-Speech-1-103"
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"en.20060612.16.1-103"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to thank all those who have spoken in the debate. I agree with most of the observations that I have heard.
I also share Mrs Breyer’s call for long-term initiatives, such as a European day for the fight against people-trafficking, and I hope that by the middle of next year we shall have fixed a date for this.
As I have already said, I support the idea of reducing demand. Nevertheless, in order to establish the impact on trafficking of the demand for prostitution it is essential to carry out analyses, although someone expressed the contrary view. We started work together on this proposal at the beginning of this year and I can tell you that we have acquired a great deal of new information. Today we know fairly precisely which are the trafficking routes and the main countries of origin; we have also identified the Member States used as routes by the minibuses that take small groups of girls to Germany.
I can also tell you that, although the police forces’ data are difficult to explain, hundreds of checks have been carried out in recent months – not only in Germany but also in many transit countries, such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Thanks to these checks, persons guilty of trafficking young women have been stopped and arrested.
By these means and thanks to the cooperation between police forces, we have managed to reduce the potential impact to a percentage that we are not yet in a position to specify, because the hundreds of individuals subjected to checks and detained were heading for Germany. I should therefore like to express my appreciation for the conduct of the German authorities.
Mrs Batzeli has asked how the German authorities operate on the ground. I can confirm that they operate well, both at Federal and at
level. When you have the opportunity to read the final report after the end of the World Cup championship, you will learn something that we too are gradually discovering: namely that the checks have been tightened up and that many cases have been detected where false declarations of the purpose of a short-term stay, for example to work in a bar or carry out domestic work, in fact conceal victims of sexual exploitation. The victims have been identified and the perpetrators have probably been arrested.
In conclusion, I reaffirm the need to strike at the root of these cases. There exists a European Action Plan, supported by you in December 2005, which we must now implement, starting from the standpoint of the inviolable nature of every person’s rights and human dignity. It is on this basis that we shall be working during the coming months.
First and foremost, we are faced on the occasion of the World Cup championship not with a tragic emergency situation but with a modern form of slavery that unfortunately will continue to strike at hundreds of thousands and probably millions of young women. It is therefore clear that we should not confine our deliberations to the World Cup.
Precisely for this reason, as I have already disclosed, we shall organise a workshop immediately after the World Cup. In the course of this workshop we shall bring together all the experiences of this month and draw conclusions to be included in a document that will serve for all other sporting events of this type, and also for cultural and political events. For example, the German police authorities encountered an increase in forced prostitution at the time of Expo in Hanover some years ago.
There has been much discussion of telephone helplines. Given the urgency of providing an answer and indeed because we consider that NGOs should play a part in this project, we are thinking of entrusting the management of two multilingual helplines, which are already in operation, to Solvodi, an NGO that is especially well-known in Germany. They have promised 24-hour cover during this period.
Let me add that the Commission also intends to give financial support to the European helplines for women, as we have done for the protection of children who are victims of violence. Unfortunately it has not been possible to provide funds for this project from the 2006 budget, but I think that we shall be able to effect it under the 2007 budget. Since this is a medium-term measure, I have instructed my office to look into a legally viable formula that would also allow us to allocate funding for young women who are victims of sexual exploitation.
Much has also been said about communication and information. I entirely agree with Mrs Vincenzi’s recommendation that we must spoil the party if necessary, and accordingly avoid remaining silent when there are hard-hitting messages to be delivered. I must admit that we have had little time and that I have needed to concentrate institutionally on activities of prevention and rapid reaction, which must clearly be accompanied by information campaigns. Here again I am willing to make a financial contribution towards information campaigns.
Furthermore, as I have already noted, we have activated for the first time the network of Member States’ consulates in the countries of origin, since we consider that it is precisely in those countries that information campaigns aimed at potential victims must be more forceful and more widespread.
I entirely agree on the need to separate the concept of people-trafficking and trafficking for sexual purposes from the immigration question, given that they are entirely different issues. You are aware that we are monitoring the implementation of the European regulations now in force, in the first instance the Framework Decision. These regulations must be adopted by the Member States; they keep the issues of people-trafficking and immigration completely separate.
The victims are victims, not illegal immigrants. They therefore have the right to benefit from those assistance programmes already provided by certain Member States for those persons who report that they have been victims of exploitation or, still worse, of forced trafficking for sexual purposes."@en1
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