Malta late in adopting EU law against paedophiles

Malta is almost six months late in transposing in its statue book EU law protecting children from sexual abuse.

An EU Council Framework Decision, entitled Combating Sexual Exploitation Of Children And Child Pornography, which had to be transposed by January, is still at the Attorney General's office.

Commission sources said yesterday that the Brussels executive is contemplating legal action against all member states still "dragging their feet" on the matter.

Meanwhile, sources close to the government confirmed that the law in question is still being studied by the Attorney General's office. The sources added that, despite the increase in funding and human resources over the past years in view of EU membership, the Attorney General's office is still finding it difficult to revise all the EU legislation on time.

Council Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA on combating child sex offences was adopted by the EU Council in December 2003 and had to become enforceable in all the EU member states last January, two years after the law was officially published in the EU journal.

This legislation establishes common definitions of three criminal offences: child prostitution, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, including child pornography on the internet.

It provides common sanctions that are effective, proportionate and dissuasive, including imprisonment. One of the main provisions is to impose a temporary or even a permanent ban on child sex offenders taking a job involving the supervision of children.

In a recent attempt to severely curb this growing criminal offence and to prevent convicted paedophiles to move freely from one member state to the other, the European Parliament endorsed a proposal to further improve this legislation.

According to the European Parliament, any court prohibition on working with children arising from sex offences against minors or from child pornography, will be enforceable not only by the member state which issues it but also by any other EU country to which that person moves.

This rule should help avoid cases as happened last year when a paedophile convicted in France committed a similar crime in Belgium.