What changed between the resolution motion and the adopted text

Removed:6. Urges the Member States to prioritise the identification, prosecution and severe punishment of adult recruiters, handlers, family members, gang leaders and intermediaries who use minors as criminal tools;

Added:5. Calls on the Commission to address the recruitment of children by organised criminal groups also in the upcoming legislative proposal for modernised rules on organised crime; invites the Commission to consider including in this proposal specific provisions, such as aggravating circumstances for the recruitment of children; reiterates, in this respect, its call for the establishment of a new common definition of ‘criminal organisation’, which also takes into account the use of violence, corruption or intimidation by criminal groups;

Removed:7. Considers that the responsibility of parents or legal guardians must be taken seriously and calls on the Member States to examine appropriate sanctions, including the review of certain social benefits and allowances or refusal or withdrawal of work permits for parents or legal guardians who knowingly tolerate, facilitate or profit from the repeated criminal activity of minors under their responsibility;

Added:6. Calls on the Commission to publish, as soon as possible, a legislative proposal for the revision of the EU Pyrotechnics Directive to address the use of pyrotechnics as weapons, including the exploitation of vulnerable young people; encourages the Member States to intensify cooperation with Europol and Eurojust, particularly in ports, logistics hubs and urban areas with vulnerable communities, by sharing best practices and providing training on identifying and reporting suspicious activities involving children;

Removed:8. Calls for stronger mechanisms requiring offenders and, where appropriate, civilly responsible adults to compensate victims for damage caused by offences committed by minors; stresses that the victims of crimes committed by minors recruited by organised networks must remain at the centre of the legislative and judicial response through improved access to compensation, protection, information and legal remedies;

Added:7. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to recognise drug-related intimidation as an established recruitment pathway into organised crime; calls on the Member States to ensure that national strategies addressing child recruitment explicitly incorporate interagency responses to drug-related intimidation, drawing on emerging best practice models;

Removed:9. Calls on the Member States to strengthen the use of detention, closed educational facilities, electronic monitoring and strict judicial supervision for minors who are involved in serious or repeated offences linked to organised crime;

Added:8. Urges the adoption of a prevention-first approach and integrated protection systems that are child-centred, gender-responsive, trauma-informed and cross-sectoral, focusing on the early identification of at-risk children, community-based interventions and strengthening families and social services; highlights the positive role of sport, educational associations and community organisations in offering safe, healthy and inclusive environments;

Removed:10. Calls on Europol to strengthen its work on the recruitment of minors into organised crime, including by examining the role of digital platforms, gaming environments and cross-border gang structures;

Added:9. Considers that the cross-border nature of organised crime renders purely national victim protection responses inadequate for children and young people; calls for enhanced cooperation among the security, justice, child protection, education and health sectors, as well as public-private partnerships, to ensure integrated and cross-sectoral protective environment frameworks for children, both offline and online;

Removed:11. Calls for stronger action by digital platforms against content, accounts and networks that are used to recruit minors into criminal activity, while respecting fundamental rights and due process; stresses the need to combat the glamorisation online of gang culture, violence, drug trafficking, weapons offences and easy money;

Added:10. Stresses that the online dimension of child recruitment is now central to the operational models of organised criminal and terrorist groups, which systematically exploit digital services to identify, target, groom, manipulate and coerce children; stresses that the online recruitment of children by organised criminal networks creates a significant enforcement gap due to limited cooperation by platforms; calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure that current obligations for platforms are enforced;

Added:11. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure the robust, consistent and child-rights-compliant enforcement of the Digital Services Act, in line with the Commission guidelines on the protection of minors;

Added:12. Calls on the Commission to ensure the full enforcement of EU digital legislation, and to strengthen, where necessary, the obligations on platforms to take action against the exploitation and recruitment of children, as well as to strengthen the protection of minors online through the upcoming Digital Fairness Act, closing regulatory gaps in areas such as safety by design, age-appropriate defaults, and targeted commercial practices directed at children, while ensuring that new measures remain proportionate, evidence-based, and consistent with the broader digital regulatory framework;

Added:13. Stresses the growing threat of crime-as-a-service, including violence-as-a-service, through which young people are recruited online to undertake violent tasks; welcomes Europol’s Operational Taskforce GRIMM and calls on the Member States, Europol and Eurojust to strengthen joint investigations targeting recruiters, instigators and high-level actors, rather than limiting enforcement action to the minors carrying out the offences;

Added:14. Emphasises that children involved in criminal activities as a result of recruitment must be treated in line with international standards; recalls that engagement with violent groups is often driven by gradual coercion and group dynamics rather than ideological adherence;

Added:15. Stresses that due account must always be taken of the individual circumstances of each case, including coercion or exploitation, as well as of the seriousness of the criminal offence committed, of the level of risk posed by the offender to public safety, and of the applicable EU and national law;

Added:16. Calls for child-friendly, gender-responsive and trauma-informed justice systems and tailored cross-sectoral, trauma-informed reintegration programmes, including access to education, mental health and psychosocial support and recovery and rehabilitation services, protection from retaliation, including for the families, pathways to decent employment and measures to prevent stigmatisation and repeated recruitment; recalls that under Directive (EU) 2016/800, deprivation of a child’s liberty, in particular detention, should be imposed only as a measure of last resort and, where possible, Member States’ competent authorities should have recourse to alternative measures; notes that in certain Member States restorative justice has proven to be effective;

Added:17. Urges the Member States to improve interoperable, cross-sectoral data collection and sharing on the recruitment of children into organised criminal and terrorist groups, including disaggregated and harmonised EU-wide data, to better understand trends and risk factors; stresses that any collection, processing or sharing of data concerning children must fully comply with data protection rules and the principle of non-discrimination;

Added:18. Supports the scaling up of successful evidence-based initiatives such as the EU-UNODC STRIVE Juvenile project and its strategic successor, EU-UNODC Protecting Futures initiative, including in fragile and conflict-affected contexts;

19. Calls for stronger international cooperation with partner countries to address cross-border recruitment networks and prevent the externalisation of criminal exploitation;

Change 4

Removed:13. Rejects any approach that treats all minors who are involved in organised crime solely as passive victims, as this risks weakening deterrence, undermining public trust and encouraging criminal networks to continue exploiting legal loopholes;

Added:20. Stresses that as part of such cooperation, particular attention must be paid to children in situations of heightened vulnerability, including unaccompanied and migrant children, and access must be ensured to safe reporting channels, guardianship, legal assistance and rights-based cross-border child protection mechanisms;

Removed:14. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Member States, Europol, Eurojust, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Added:21. Stresses the importance of addressing root causes, including poverty, inequality, exclusion, lack of education and exposure to violence and underinvestment in public services; calls on the Commission and the Member States to increase financial support for civil society organisations, community-based initiatives, sports associations and educational programmes in areas most exposed to organised crime recruitment, offering credible alternatives to criminal pathways;

Added:22. Is particularly concerned about the disproportionate targeting and exploitation of girls and young women by organised criminal networks, including through grooming, trafficking and sexual exploitation; stresses that girls face specific barriers to escaping criminal coercion and to accessing justice, recovery and reintegration, and calls on the Member States to ensure that all prevention, protection and support measures are gender-responsive and specifically address the vulnerabilities and needs of girls; recalls in this regard the obligations set out in the Anti-Trafficking Directive;

Added:23. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to allocate adequate funding under relevant EU programmes to prevent and effectively respond to the recruitment of children by organised criminal and terrorist groups, and in particular to support the 116 000 missing children hotline network as key multi-agency partners in identifying children at risk;

Added:24. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the governments and parliaments of the Member States, Europol and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.