European Commissioner for Justice and Home affairs, António Vitorino, told the conference:
“The Commission will propose this year an initiative in the area of child pornography on the internet as part of a wider package of proposals, which will also cover issues associated with the sexual exploitation of children and trafficking in human beings. We will also examine [...] the opportunity to propose a similar initiative concerning the fight against [racism and xenophobia]."
Vitorino went on to describe existing forms of cross-border assistance as “entirely inadequate” for internet crime investigations and, to remedy this, called for the application of “mutual recognition principles to the preservation of traffic data and the search and seizure of data on the internet.”
He said that the Commission intends closer collaboration with ISPs and telecommunications operators to assist in training law enforcement staff.
Robert Cailliau, who is credited as a co-founder of the World Wide Web with Tim Berners-Lee, called for licensing of internet users. He said: “I am opposed to censorship by the industry itself, but sites and authors should be registered [and] the legal framework must be global.”