Paedophiles face EU-wide restrictions on movement

By David Cronin

Date: 15/09/05

Convicted paedophiles would face EU-wide restrictions on working with children under a new law being drafted by the European Commission.

The move comes in response to the case of serial killer Michel Fourniret, who evaded arrest in Belgium for many years until June 2003. Although Fourniret had been convicted for raping minors in his native France, he was able to secure a job in a school in Belgium, where the authorities were unaware of his criminal record.

Denise Sorasio, head of the internal security and criminal justice division in the Commission, announced on Tuesday (13 September) that a proposal aimed at avoiding a repetition of the case would be published by the end of this year.

Speaking to the European Parliament's civil liberties committee, she conceded that putting in place an EU-wide ban would be fraught because there was no common approach to sentencing sexual crimes in the 25 member states.

But she said that a first step had already been taken in March, when the Commission outlined plans for mutual recognition of convictions between member states.

In November, the Union's justice ministers are to discuss a Belgian initiative for exchanging details between EU countries on sexual offences against children. Laurette Onkelinx, the Belgian justice minister, said that the Fourniret case illustrated how "information is indispensable to fight crime".

But Spanish conservative MEP Agustin Diaz de Mera argued that the Belgian plans did not go far enough. There was a need for greater specificity about what kind of bans would apply to paedophiles, he said.

He cited the case of Tony Alexander King, a Briton, who killed two Spanish girls in the 1999-2003 period. King, whose real name is Tony Bromwich, had worked as a barman and lived in the grounds of a school in Costa del Sol. The Spanish authorities had no knowledge of his prior record for several rapes in London, where he was known as the "Holloway strangler".

Diaz de Mera argued that simply allowing the law-enforcement authorities in one member state to inspect the registers of crimes in another might not be adequate. "We have to explore the possibility of a mandatory transmission of data," he said. "For that mutual recognition [of court judgments] is essential."

Article reports on a new piece of legislation being drafted by the European Commission under which convicted paedophiles would face EU-wide restrictions on working with children. EU Ministers for Justice were planning to discuss a Belgian initiative for exchanging details between EU countries on sexual offences against children.