EU Action Plan on promoting safer use of the Internet - the CISA project |
Meeting with Commissioner Erkki Liikanen
Ann Davison, director of European Research into Consumer Affairs (ERICA), met with the EU Commissioner responsible for Information Society issues, Erkki Liikanen, in Brussels on 29th April 2002 to discuss the concerns expressed by parents, teachers and other concerned individuals (and organisations) who attended seminars and consultations across Europe as part of the ERICA-led CISA project, co-financed by the EU Internet Action Plan. She also gave him a copy of the Test Achats' report on its testing of filtering and rating systems, also part of the CISA project, which showed the weak point of the systems tested to be on violence, bomb-making, racism etc.
Commission Liikanen said that the new Internet Action Plan will include actions to encourage safety messages to children, hotlines and filtering systems, which parents can use to block pornographic sites for example. He agreed to give a new priority to the problem of hate sites, racism and violence.
The Commissioner also agreed to look at how children could be better protected against pornography, violence and paedophile approach on-line by asking for comparative statistics to be produced on child abductions via the net, on-line approaches to children, amount of supervision of kids by parents, number of hate sites etc so that we can see where best practice exists and copy it. He also agreed to examine whether advice for parents could be distributed with new computers.
Reference was made to different perspectives on violence versus free speech between the EU and US and Ann Davison said the EU was a big enough market to go it alone if need be. "The Internet may be global", she said, "but it comes into our homes and interacts with our children. What could be more local than that?"
The Commissioner would not promise any new laws yet, however, preferring to see what could be negotiated at international level first.
Note: We have an advice sheet on filtering and rating systems which you are welcome to use in return for translating it and sending it to us.
