Sarkozy backs Conservative call for EU-wide missing child alert
Posted, July 10, 2008 @ 13:00
Strasbourg - 10th July 2008 -- President Sarkozy is backing the Conservative campaign to establish an EU-wide Missing Child Amber Alert scheme as a key part of the French Presidency of the EU which began on July 1st.
Edward McMillan-Scott MEP, a Vice President of the European Parliament and long-standing campaigner for improved children's rights in Europe, has fought to establish the Amber Alert system with the support of Kate and Gerry McCann, whose daughter Madeleine was abducted in May 2007. He has been in regular contact with the French president's advisers.
The European Commission has been pressing governments to set up a system which requires blanket warnings in the media and on motorway signs following a child abduction, but only France currently has one. Since the Amber Alert began in the USA in 2003, nearly 400 children have been recovered, 80 per cent within the crucial first 72 hours.
EU Interior Ministers, meeting on Tuesday, agreed to pursue the idea as part of the French president's "people-friendly" EU, which he outlined to MEPs this morning.
Today more than the majority of MEPs signed a Written Declaration supporting the amber alert system in order to put pressure on governments - a point made to McMillan-Scott when he met Commissioner Jacques Barrot, who represented Brussels at the ministerial meeting on Tuesday.
After presenting the Written Declaration to Commissioner Barrot, Mr McMillan-Scott said:
"I am delighted that the majority of MEPs have backed this important initiative, started by Kate and Gerry McCann after their personal tragedy. Now the Amber Alert concept has real impetus across the EU.
"In most countries, including the UK, there is a patchwork of children's charities and police schemes which claim to have an alert, but only France and the US have a serious system. Sometimes a missing child may be taken across frontiers, so inter-operability is essential too.
"If we can afford to put out Severe Weather Warnings, we can afford to save children's lives."
McMillan-Scott sponsored visits by the McCanns to the European Parliament in April and June.