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Deutsch: Europäische Kommission schlägt Netzsperren vor und verteidigt rechts...

On 29 March 2010, the European Commission re-launched its initiative on child exploitation. This initiative was originally launched in March 2009 as a "Framework Decision", but was withdrawn due to the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty.

With regard to Internet blocking, there are two crucial differences between the new proposal and the one launched last year. Both changes were made in order to try to reduce the opposition to the proposal to introduce EU-wide Internet blocking, thereby creating the basis for a continent-wide censorship infrastructure.

Firstly, when the Commission launched its original proposal, the blocking measures would have required laws to be introduced in the Member States (as blocking would have been by judicial or police order). This is necessary in order for the measure to have any hope of being in compliance with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights which states that "the exercise of these freedoms, (...) may be subject to such formalities, (...) as are prescribed by law." This need for a legal basis was confirmed in the otherwise rather empty impact assessment. "Such measures must indeed be subject to law, or they are illegal." On Commissioner Malmström's blog, her spokesperson repeatedly gives a preference for "voluntary" blocking.

In the Council of Ministers, Member States such as Sweden and the United Kingdom that already have "self-regulatory" "voluntary" blocking opposed this measure as they did not want to introduce laws.

As a result, the European Commission amended its proposal to simply require "measures" to be taken to bring about blocking - thereby avoiding the opposition of the countries who currently carry out blocking without a legal basis and facilitating the ongoing breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. As one of the first proposals of the new Commission - the Commission that will take the historical step of accession to the European Convention on Human Rights - this is a profoundly, crushingly disappointing, cynical and, above all, illiberal, move.

The second change was to create a vague and therefore legally unenforceable "obligation" on Member States to take the "necessary measures" to have the websites in question removed from the Internet. This measure duplicates a range of existing "binding" international obligations, such as those provided for in Article 34 of the UN Child Rights Convention. Would another vague and unenforceable obligation on Member States achieve anything? Well, not according to the European Commission, which argued (in its "impact assessment" of this proposal) that a Directive is necessary due to the lack of a " vigorous monitoring mechanism" in the Council of Europe Convention on child exploitation. This new text does, however, permit the Commission to argue that it is not promoting blocking (with its specific obligation) ahead of deletion of sites (with its vague and unenforceable obligation) but is working on both measures simultaneously.

Proposal for a Directive on combating the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, repealing Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA (29.03.2010)
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2010:0094:FI...

Impact assessment (25.03.2009)
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=SEC:2009:0355:FI...

Commissioner Malmström's blog (in Swedish and English) on this issue (29.03.2010)
http://ceciliamalmstrom.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/ett-slag-for-barnens-...

MOGiS (abuse survivors against internet blocking): Remove, don't block! - Act, and don't look away!
http://mogis-verein.de/eu/

(Contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi)