POLICY OF EUROPEAN UNION ON THE SAFETY OF CHILDREN IN CYBER SPACE

Abstract

The usage of Internet by children is increasing, both with regard to the number of children going online and time spent on Internet, as well as it became a dominant and primary channel through which they communicate with one another. It is obvious, that ICTs can open a door to a better future for children, offering greater access to learning, interests contents and other benefits that can help them fulfil their potential, but in addition to that, the expansion of availability and accessibility of ICTs has also created a number of threats to person’s and especially to children’s safety, who are particularly vulnerable to ICT-facilitated crimes or cybercrimes.1 While increased and more frequent usage of ICTs entails a heightened risk of infringements on privacy and safety for all users, children are at particular risk, as they often do not fully understand the threats associated with these technologies, especially when it comes to sharing of personal information, photos or videos. Each EU country has own law system based on its historical and cultural aspects, but cybersecurity is qually important for all of them. It proves the fact that cybercrimes were recognized as one of the EU Policy Cycle’s priorities and a special role in this list belongs to improving the safety of children online. The main aim of this priority is combating child sexual abuse (CSA) and child sexual exploitation (CSE), including the production and dissemination of CSAM and CSEM. The aim of the article is to identify main threats to children’s safety in cyberspace and to evaluate the EU’s normative acts which put an order in this problem for promoting the understanding of the EU security policy and to evaluate opportunities of cyberspace improvement for children’s safety. To achieve the mentioned aim, further tasks are settled: to analyze ICT solutions, international legal acts, and tools, which provide the opportunity for the EU's police organizations to enhance the possibility to detect, investigate and prevent CSA and CSE in cyberspace; to provide recommendations for improving methods of detection, investigation and prevention of CSA and CSE in cyberspace; to reveal what can be improved in the field of international police cooperation in order to ensure successful detection and investigation of CSA and CSE in cyberspace.