In 24Horas this morning:

Kate and Gerry at the European Parliament, to speak about missing children

The McCanns were in Strasbourg yesterday to take care of a petition and ended up reacting, in an irritated manner, to questions from the journalists about the evening of the 3rd of May 2007



McCanns lose their calm

Kate and Gerry were in Strasbourg yesterday, where they convinced 225 MEPs to sign the petition for the creation of an European alert system for missing children. The problem, for the McCanns, was the press conference that they gave in the late afternoon. The journalists�?favourite dish was not the petition, but rather the couple’s behaviour on the evening of the 3rd of May 2007, when Madeleine disappeared in Praia da Luz, Algarve.

One of the questions was why they left their daughter alone on the fateful night. The McCanns reacted with a bad temper. The “real issue�? they underlined, is the abduction. “We did not abandon or neglect Madeleine. Someone entered the apartment and took a child. That is the issue. To go over that matter is very boring�? Gerry McCann said. Kate supported her husband, with the same irritation: “The real issue is that a child was abducted and there is a criminal who is still out there�?

Gerry insisted. “We need to focus on the real issue. Continuously raising that question is unhelpful. Nothing has changed over the last 14 months and I don’t understand why we are talking about that, again�?

The couple only calmed down when they were allowed to speak again about the issue that was on their agenda: the petition to create a European alert system for missing children. Kate and Gerry thanked the 225 MEPs that have already signed the petition, and exhorted others to do it.

They remembered that 393 signatures are necessary, half of the hemicycle, until the end of July, in order for the text to be sent to the European Commission and for the communitarian executive to present a proposal in that sense to the Council. In Brussels�?hallways, there are some who accuse the McCanns of a “media maneuver�?with this initiative.

“What is the use of this petition? There is already a European law proposal for the creation of such an alert system. It is on its way to being approved in Strasbourg, and then to be taken before the European Commission. That proposal, which has been worked upon for quite some time, will then have to be approved by each member state�? a source in Brussels criticized.

“Media maneuver�?/SPAN>

The same source remembered that the McCanns have “associated themselves to an initiative that belongs to the European Commission, in a media maneuver�?

One of the main promoters of that initiative was Margarida Sousa Uva, the wife of the president of the European Union, Durão Barroso.

In March, Sousa Uva alerted in Brussels to the “lack of political will�?within the 27 to create an effective alert system. One month later, in April, the McCanns met with a group of MEPs that wrote the text about the European alert. It was then that they started speaking about the petition.

Numbers

14 of July is the date from which the Maddie process ceases to be covered by the judicial secrecy. The McCanns heard about that date through 24Horas, yesterday.

4 is the number of European Union member states that have an alert system: Germany, France, Greece and the United Kingdom. The proposal intends to widen it on 27.