Malta urged to set up missing children hotline

Malta was among 16 EU member states still without a missing children emergency hotline service, the European Commission said yesterday.

Member states have another year to activate this EU-wide service on the number 116 000, according to an EU directive. However, on the occasion of International Missing Children's Day, marked yesterday, the Commission urged member states to start providing this service as soon as possible and not wait until the last minute to fulfil their obligations.

"Every missing child is a tragedy and we must do everything we can to prevent such tragedies. The Commission devised the European 116 000 hotline to report missing children and offer guidance and support to their families, everywhere in Europe. I regret to see that the hotline works only in 11 member states," the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, Viviane Reding said.

"It is hard to come to terms with the fact that measures that could help are not yet fully operational across the Union. It would be a double tragedy to imagine a missing child trying to call the 116 000 hotline only to hear an answering machine playing a pre-recorded message announcing that the service will be operational soon. I call on member states to put in every effort to change this."

Missing children's hotlines are operational in Belgium, Denmark, Greece, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia.

With the adoption of new EU telecoms rules last year, all member states are obliged to make every effort to ensure that the 116 000 hotline is activated by May 2011.

The Commission said it would closely monitor the implementation of this obligation by the member states as it did for the single European emergency number 112, which now works free of charge anywhere in the EU.

Some member states have already gone further than providing this basic service and introduced cross-border child alert systems that help in the search of abducted children by enabling the public to provide the relevant authorities with real-time information.

These systems are available in the Netherlands, Portugal, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Greece, Germany and the UK.