Brussels, 22/12/2004 (Agence Europe) - A group of 20 European experts are calling on the European Union to do more work to protect victims of the traffic in human beings, whether this involves illegal immigrants or victims of sexual exploitation. Marjan Wijers, president of this experts' group set up in 2003 by the European Commission, presented its first report on Wednesday in Brussels. Neglecting the protection of victims made the fight against trafficking less effective and caused them to lose track of their obligations to these people, Wijers declared in a press conference, highlighting the fact that Member States had to qualify their repressive vision of this problem and focus more on the victims.
Ms Wijers said that the directive granting residency to victims who co-operated with the justice system, adopted last April, "had to be seen as a beginning" and "had to be de eloped at national and European levels". The experts' group also said that a three month reflection deadline for anyone who appeared to be a victim of trafficking was granted residency of 6 months, whether or not the victim wanted to cooperate with the legal authorities against the traffickers. The European directive does not state the length of time for the reflection deadline and only offers residency conditions to victims who cooperate with the judiciary. The report highlights cooperation between all actors in Member States, as well as conditions for children. Experts believe that restrictions on legal immigration have "created a market for illegal immigration". They are critical of the lack of data on trafficking and underline the importance of understanding the problem better in order to fight if more effectively.
Next year the European Commission is going to present (perhaps in the first half of the year) a communication on trafficking in human beings, developing commons standards, best practices and prevention mechanisms, announced European Commissioner Franco Frattini on Wednesday, who also spoke of the possibility of launching pilot projects. The Commissioner highlighted the importance of fighting against this "low risks and high profit" crime". He declared that many victims came from Bulgaria, Ukraine, Moldova, as well as Nigeria.
In 2002 the European Union developed a framework decision against trafficking in human beings and a decision specifically on those doing the trafficking. In April 2004 it passed a directive on victims co-operating with the judiciary.