most of The references to child abuse gets the Federal criminal police office from the United States. The information transmitted in the previous year, more than 60,000 reports; in 40,000 cases, the identification procedures were followed. Only the German investigators came to the huge abuse networks in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany and Münster on the track.

Thomas Gutschker

Political correspondent for the European Union, Nato and the Benelux countries, based in Brussels.

F. A. Z.

In America, there is a reporting obligation for the local Internet service provider. And a Central collection point: the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, short NCMEC. The European Union is taking the now to the model. You want to create a reporting obligation and a European centre. This is the core of the new strategy in the fight against child sexual abuse, which has been decided by the EU Commission on Friday.

“We need sharper tools,” said the competent Commissioner for Ylva Johansson. “Next year we will bring a new legislation to relevant social media and Messaging services, to impose the duty, that they have (tracking illegal) content, report, delete and report to the appropriate authorities.”

The draft law is planned for the second quarter of 2021. In addition, Johansson proposed a European centre for prevention and fight against child abuse. It should collect, according to the American model, the reports of all the companies that offer in the European Union, its services, and them in a database to summarize. In addition, it is to be a hub for research and Expertise on the prevention. The Commission is faced with large deficits. She has also already initiated infringement proceedings against most member States. Did not make it a Directive against child abuse from 2011 to transpose into national law.

American model

The precise mandate, structures and the financing of the planned center to be examined in the next few months, as the Swedish Commissioner announced. The American model, NCMEC is formally a non-profit private institution, funded with a two-digit million sums from the Federal budget. It was created in 1984 by Ronald Reagan, after several cases of child abduction had agitated the country. In the previous year, the European Parliament urged, a private centre for the EU.

there are good reasons for that. In the past five years, the EU had become the center of the exchange of child pornography, said Johansson. According to the Internet Watch Foundation, in the meantime, two-thirds of the representations of the child are offered abuse in Europe, especially in the Netherlands. In the last year of the American have been reported, with more than 700,000 suspected cases, which were related to the possible Victims and offenders in the EU; it was about three million images and 100,000 Videos.