EU pushes French missing children solution

BRUSSELS - EU states should adopt a French system for finding missing children, justice commissioner Franco Frattini said on Wednesday (17 January) at a gathering of US, Russian and EU VIPs in Paris' Elysee palace.

"The European Commission is ready to catalyse and provoke the necessary meetings among interested parties at European level," he stated, adding that "Europe must become...a guardian angel of its children and the world's children."

The French scheme (pioneered in the US) sees police send emails and SMSs to ordinary people within a 15 km radius of a missing child alert, containing a description and urging vigilance, with the zone widened to 30 km and further as time goes on.

Mr Frattini also urged other credit card companies to follow the example of Visa Europe which has introduced digital protection measures that make it "virtually impossible" for custmers to buy paedophile material on the internet.

There are no firm statistics on missing children - a category that embraces kidnappings and runaways - but Brussels estimates that 1,800 minors are reported missing each year in Italy, 1,000 in Belgium, 850 in the UK and 70,000 EU-wide.

Mr Frattini's Elysee speech - delivered to a gathering including the Kings of Belgium and Sweden plus VIP wives Ludmilla Putin, Sousa Uva Barroso and Laura Bush - is part of a wider EU push to combat child abuse in Europe.

In February Brussels plans to propose EU states set up a single telephone number - 116000 - that anybody in the EU can call to raise the alarm on abuse, with implementation tabled before the summer.

The growing list of small, concrete projects on child abuse is coupled with broader ambitions on fighting cross-border crime, with EU states last year agreeing rules on keeping phone records and this week on sharing DNA and fingerprint data.

But several member states are opposed to the EU extending its powers in criminal justice matters, with Germany, UK and Ireland blocking last year's plans to end national vetos on EU justice reform and Poland killing an EU-wide prisoner-exchange scheme.

Asked why Mr Frattini's Visa Europe suggestion will not be turned into a legally-binding requirement for credit card firms in the EU, his spokesman said "This is where our legal powers end - we have strict limitations in this area."