Belgium The ugly, hidden face of new Europe

May 1, 2007

Translation :

Original English version vailable on the web: http://www.peoplepowerprocess.com/images/magflash/may07/pdfs/pages34-36.pdf

Comment: In a quite classical way for articles about trafficking in human beings, the article starts with the story of a victim. But quickly, the text describes the different paths and forms of exploitation of children. From a case of trafficking of newborns between Bulgaria and Greece, the journalist evokes also other cases in France (a trial in January 07) and mentions “for older children, the situation is equally harrowing. Many Roma children from Bulgaria and Romania face the prospect of being farmed out to criminal gangs across Europe where they are coerced into begging, pick-pocketing and sometimes even prostitution.”

Quite well documented, the article reports about various child trafficking routes: Bulgaria – Austria, but also towards Germany, Denmark and UK. The description continues with Romania – Italy and France and ends in Brussels, “one of the biggest transit and destination cities for women trafficked into the sex trade”.

The three-page report quotes a surprising number of different sources of information: not only the international bodies such as Unicef and Europol, but the paper quotes also the head of a crisis center in Vienna and several NGOs: the Belgian based Child Focus, the 'Stop the traffik' campaign and the International Federation of Terre des hommes .

The Brussels magazine concludes with the role of the Commission officials and the recent report of Slovak MEP Edit Bauer, in which one information is revealed as an anomaly of the EU system: “the fact that the 2004 directive requiring that trafficking victims be granted a temporary residence permit and assistance only applies to non-EU nationals. Paradoxically, this means that there are now less legal provisions to help the citizens of two of the largest source countries of victims, Romania and Bulgaria.”