Brussels, 14/03/2003 (Agence Europe) - The Greek Presidency is proposing that Member States harmonise the definition of organ trafficking and the trafficking of tissue of human origin and adopt a common minimum level of at least ten years imprisonment for the most serious offences.
All legislation would define the situation as "trafficking" when: a) an organ is removed from a live donor using force, threat or trickery; b) an organ is taken from a donor who has given his/her consent upon the promise of payment; c) payment has been made or promised, either directly or through a third party, to a donor to gain his/her consent for removal of a body organ; d) the donor or a third party obtains or requests financial reward so that the donor agrees to give an organ; e) an intermediary acts in order to accomplish the acts mentioned under points a) to d) above; f) when financial reward is requested, obtained, paid or promised with a view to the giving, acquisition and, more generally, the trafficking of organs and tissue of human origin. In the same way, organ trafficking is defined as such in the case of purchase, detention, storage, transport, importation, exportation, or transfer of human organs removed in the context of one of the acts defined above or in the context of recruitment, transport, transfer or housing of a person through the use of force, fraudulent means, abuse of authority or the offer or acceptance of an advantage or payment to convince another person. The fact, for a doctor or nursing staff, of taking part in the transplant of a body organ when it is known that the organ has been obtained in one of the above-mentioned ways, would also be sanctioned.
According to the proposal, the Member States should foresee in their legislation that such offences, like the fact of being accomplice to or encouraging someone to commit such acts, should be liable to effective criminal punishment, which is proportionate to the offence and dissuasive, and likely to entail extradition. Infringements should be liable to at least ten years imprisonment when they are committed in the following circumstances: a) the author of the offence has deliberately or through serious negligence endangered the life of the victim; b) the offence has been committed against a minor; c) the offence has caused particularly serious injury to the victim; d) the infringement has been committed in the context of a criminal organisation in accordance with the common action 98/733/JHA, independently of the framework provided for this concerning penalties. The legal persons involved in organ trafficking should be liable to: a) measures excluding them from all advantages or public aid; or b) measures of temporary or permanent ban on exercising a commercial activity or c) being placed under judicial surveillance; or d) a judiciary measure of dissolution; or e) the temporary or definitive closure of establishments having served to commit the offence.