WRITTEN QUESTION E-1289/00

by Pasqualina Napoletano (PSE) to the Council

(27 April 2000)

Subject: Abduction of Somali children from the Italian families charged with their custody

In recent years there have been numerous cases of children, mainly of Somalian nationality, who had been entrusted to the custody of Italian families being abducted by their (real or alleged) parents and illegally taken to other countries (including various European Union countries).

In some cases it has proved possible to trace the children concerned, but the families to whom they had previously been entrusted encountered considerable problems in seeking to ensure that the rights of such children were protected by the judicial authorities of some Member States of the Union.

There is reason to believe that, in many cases, these minors were not abducted by their real parents but by third parties intent on exploiting them for financial gain.

In particular, many problems have arisen as a result of the fact that in some cases the provisions of the Convention of The Hague on international child abduction have not been fully applied in practice, which has caused difficulties in ascertaining how children are being treated and whether they are in good health, and in exercising the right to visit the children and ensuring that minors are repatriated, as laid down by the Convention. This is due to the tendency of the judicial authorities in some signatory states to consider the merits of the original custody proceedings, in flagrant breach of the spirit of the Convention, which limits the requirement to review the merits of custody arrangements to a few special cases only.

In view of the foregoing:

- Would the Council state what measures the Union institutions intend to adopt to ensure effective judicial cooperation with regard to the custody and international abduction of children?

- What measures do the Union institutions intend to adopt to ensure harmonisation of the Member States' rules on recognition of child custody arrangements?

- What measures do the Union institutions intend to adopt to ensure that existing international agreements (including the Hague Convention) are fully and effectively applied by the Member States' authorities?

Reply

(18/19 September 2000)

The Vienna Action Plan of 3 December 1998 and the conclusions of the Tampere European Council on 15 and 16 October 1999 set broad guidelines guidelines for work in the coming years, in particular in the area of judicial cooperation in civil matters, with a view to establishing an area of freedom, security and justice.

Within these guidelines no work is scheduled to commence on the possibility of custody and international abduction of children before 2004. However, if the Commission or a Member State were to submit a proposal or an initiative, pursuant to the rules in Article 67(1) of the Treaty, the Council would study it most carefully.

Moreover, the Council recently adopted a Regulation, on 29 May 2000, on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in matrimonial matters and in matters of parental responsibility for children of both spouses. This Regulation lays down rules for civil proceedings relating to parental responsibility for the children of both spouses on the occasion of matrimonial proceedings for the purpose of dissolving or loosening the marriage bond. The Regulation already introduces a degree of harmonisation of Member States' provisions, in particular on the recognition of rulings made in another Member State.

As for the third question, the Council is aware that the Member States are party to international instruments on child protection, in particular, as rightly pointed out by the Honourable Member, the Hague Convention of 25 October 1980 on the civil aspects of international child abduction. These are conventions which the Member States have signed and ratified. It is for each of the Member States to apply them fully and effectively in accordance with public international law.