Brussels, 18/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - European Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmström called on member states, on Thursday 18 October, to rapidly implement the directive on combating human trafficking. She was speaking on the 6th European Day for combating human trafficking. During a conference in Brussels, the Swedish official pointed out that the scourge of trafficking cannot be tolerated in Europe as it is tolerated elsewhere in the world.
EU member states and candidate states have until April 2013 to transpose Directive 2011/36 into their national body of law, in order to harmonise the definition of the crime of human trafficking and the penalties that such a phenomenon should entail, while providing measures for protection of the victims. In June this year, Malmström presented a European strategy against the trafficking of human beings, aimed at coordinating the policies of the different EU member states.
On Thursday 18 October, Nicolas Le Coz, who heads the Council of Europe's relevant body - GRETA, the group of experts on action against trafficking in human beings - also called on member states to ratify the international convention on human trafficking as soon as possible. Five member states have not yet done so - Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece and Estonia.
According to the European Commission, several hundred thousand people are forced to work as slaves in the EU and 81% of those victims are women or girls, who are either exploited for sexual purposes or exploited for domestic tasks, Malmström stated in June. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), 1.5 million people are forced into various kinds of slavery in the member states of the EU and the other developed countries (United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and Norway), i.e. 7% of the 20.9 million people who fall victim to trafficking worldwide, including 5.5 million children. (SP/transl.jl)