Lisbon, 02/10/2007 (Agence Europe) - With the Commission reiterating its intentions of bringing in criminal sanctions or closing down websites distributing terrorist propaganda (EUROPE 9513), the German justice minister, Brigitte Zypries, has warned of the difficulties of implementing such measures. “In Germany, such websites can be banned (…), we can easily shut down Internet pages, but they can always reappear elsewhere”, she told a press conference on Monday 1 October, at the occasion of the informal meeting of the justice ministers in Lisbon (our translation throughout). “We talk of the World Wide Web”, stressed Ms Zypries, adding that it must be acknowledged that banning sites is “easier said than done”. When sites are hosted in a third country, the EU has no way of blocking them, unless agreements are made with these countries, a diplomatic source noted. The Portuguese interior minister, Rui Pereira, whose country is currently chairing the Council of the EU, said that the EU27 had agreed in their view that “the internet must not be a zone without responsibilities”. But, “apart from this agreement, we still have a lot of work to do”, he emphasised, making no attempt to play down the “technical and legal” difficulties with this project. For his part, the new anti-terrorist coordinator of the EU, Gilles de Kerchove, can see “no problem” with making it illegal to place a manual on the internet which describes how to make a bomb with a view to committing a terrorist attack. “It is more a question of the internet as a means of communication, and the fact of following exchanges of information which counts”, he added. On the fight against child pornography, he preferred to lay emphasis on the solution of “self-regulation”, which consists of working with internet service providers. (bc)