The key role of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency is to establish an operational and technical strategy for the implementation of an integrated border management at Union level, to oversee the effective functioning of border control at the external borders of Member States, to carry out vulnerability assessments and to ensure that deficiencies in the management of the external border by national authorities are addressed, to provide increased operational and technical assistance to Member States through joint operations and r ...[+++]apid border interventions, and to ensure the practical execution of measures in case of a situation requiring urgent action at the external borders, as well as to organise, coordinate and conduct return operations and return interventions.

This report rests upon the principle that all consumers are susceptible to becoming vulnerable consumers over the course of their lives, since vulnerability can result from endogenous as well as exogenous causes. The causes are endogenous when the consumer’s vulnerability is the result of temporary or permanent causes that are inherent to the consumer or his or her physical or mental situation (children, adolescents, seniors, the disabled, etc.), and exogenous when the causes that make the consumer vulnerable are external: lack of kno ...[+++]wledge of the language, lack of education (in general or specific to a sector of the market) or, simply, the need to use new technologies with which the consumer is not familiar.

99. Stresses that action against the commercial sexual exploitation of children – i.e. trafficking in children for sexual purposes, child pornography and child sex tourism should be made one of the strategy's major objectives for action both within and outside the European Union, in particular in the light of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); points out that poverty is often one of the many causes of and reinforces social exclusion, discrimination and endangering of children; takes the view, however, that commercial sexual exploitation of children has its true origin in the demand for sex with children and in organised crime, wh ...[+++]ich is prepared to exploit situations that place children at risk;

99. Stresses that action against the commercial sexual exploitation of children – i.e. trafficking in children for sexual purposes, child pornography and child sex tourism should be made one of the strategy's major objectives for action both within and outside the European Union, in particular in the light of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); points out that poverty is often one of the many causes of and reinforces social exclusion, discrimination and endangering of children; takes the view, however, that commercial sexual exploitation of children has its true origin in the demand for sex with children and in organised crime, wh ...[+++]ich is prepared to exploit situations that place children at risk;

101. Stresses that action against the commercial sexual exploitation of children – i.e. trafficking in children for sexual purposes, child pornography and child sex tourism should be made one of the strategy’s major objectives for action both within and outside the European Union, in particular in the light of the Millennium Development Goals; points out that poverty is often one of the many causes of and reinforces social exclusion, discrimination and endangering of children; takes the view, however, that commercial sexual exploitation of children has its real origin in the demand for sex with children and in organised crime, which is ...[+++] prepared to exploit situations that place children at risk;

I would like to say, on behalf of the Committee on the Environment, that we very much support what the rapporteur has said on unfair commercial practices, that is, that the principle of the vulnerable consumer must be accepted and recognised, that we must take into account disparities between national protection rules, that we must insist on a double legal basis and that the principle of optimum harmonisation should hold good for all three directives.