Brussels, 03/06/2003 (Agence Europe) - Last week the Council of Ministers of the EU agreed with the European Parliament to accept the Commission's proposal for a two-year extension to the Safer Internet Action Plan. The Action plan supports a network of hotlines in Europe where illegal content can be reported. It encourages self-regulation; benchmarks content filtering and rating systems and supports a European network of safer internet awareness centres. It also includes measures to encourage exchange of information and co-ordination with the relevant actors at national level, and has special provisions for accession countries. Actors in the field of self-regulation are brought together through a forum - the Safer Internet Forum - modelled on the EU cyber-crime forum. The extended action plan covers many different types of illegal content or conduct including racist material, and takes account of new online technologies such as mobile and broadband content, online games, peer-to-peer file transfer and all forms of real-time communications such as chat rooms and instant messages. The networks of hotlines and awareness nodes continue to be key instruments of the programme, alongside the benchmarking of filtering software. First calls for proposals under the Safer Internet Action Plan (€13.3 million.) will be launched in July 2003. The overall budget for the programme (to be shared out over the 2003-04 period) is ERU 38.3 million.