The Dutch public prosecution department is going to get tougher on website hosting companies which allow child pornography on their servers, the Financieele Dagblad said on Tuesday.

The department receives some 25,000 reports of child pornography a year and says this is being partly facilitated by providers who claim not to be aware of the problem.

‘We have been too cautious,’ public prosecutor Martijn Egberts told the paper.

Currently some hosting companies only remove illegal material when ordered to do so in court. But the department wants to be able to take legal action against hosting companies which it sees as complicit, despite the legal problems.

‘It is extremely difficult to prove that hosting companies are deliberately closing their eyes to material which they are storing or which is being exchanged via their networks,’ Egberts told broadcaster NOS.

There are some 600 to 800 hosting companies in the Netherlands, the FD said.