The parents of missing child Madeline McCann are in Brussels to press for the setting up of a Europe wide network to track down abducted children.
Kate and Gerry McCann will join MEPs in the European Parliament who are calling for a cross border alert system similar to one in the US.
Today's meeting is organised by a group of MEPs with an interest in child welfare issues. They want European governments to set up and fund a European missing child hotline, a European Child Resource and Policy Unit, and a rapid information system modelled on the US Amber Alert system.
Named after Amber Hagerman, a nine-year-old taken and killed by her abductor, Amber Alert operates like a severe weather warning, with messages flashed on radio, TV, and motorway signs.
It is credited with helping to find some 400 children abducted in the US since 2003, most of them in the first 72 hours.
In Europe, only France and Belgium have such a system.
Kate and Gerry McCann have met the Amber alert organisers in America, and travel to Brussels today to press for a similar system here, and for a European centre to bring police, governments and voluntary agencies together to work in a faster, less bureaucratic way, on solving child abduction cases.
