Campaign to stamp out ‘sex tourism’

Date: 05/09/1996

THE European Commission is considering launching an information campaign to combat 'sex tourism'.

Its aim would be to discourage Europeans travelling abroad from indulging in sexual practices banned in their own country.

Within the next two months, the Commission is expected to call for details to be circulated to tour operators and travellers bound for destinations where sex tourism is a growing problem.

In an official communication, it may also recommend tighter controls on EU money sent to those countries, say Commission sources.

With the issue of child sex abuse capturing the headlines across Europe, the move would complement Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Anita Gradin's recent call for an international approach to the problem. Speaking at the

UN's World Congress on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Stockholm last week, Gradin called for the creation of a Europe-wide list of paedophiles and greater powers for the criminal intelligence agency Europol to track down child sex offenders.

The Commissioner is also expected to present a communication on the illegal trafficking of women and the trade in children, to justice and home affairs ministers at their meeting in Dublin on 26-27 September.

The difficulty for the Commission is that cooperation in criminal matters remains firmly intergovernmental. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty institutionalised for the first time an EU forum to discuss transnational crime, but the Commission still has little more than an observer role at its meetings.

Furthermore, the so-called 'third pillar' has a tendency to make apparently simple tasks extremely complex. National experts do not predict an easy ride for any plans to widen the remit of Europol or its drug unit.

However, diplomatic sources suggest that pressure is growing to address the criminal aspects of child sex abuse at an EU level.