The European community has launched a major initiative to address the growing online traffic in child pornography.

The European Financial Coalition (EFC), announced earlier this week, is composed of online transaction technology giants MasterCard, Microsoft, PayPal, VISA Europe in partnership with anti-porn organizations Missing Children Europe and Britain’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).

“It is a reality that the rapid growth of the Internet has opened up a serious criminal market for images of child sex abuse,” EU Commissioner Jacques Bardot told reporters. “The European Financial Coalition will help identify and protect victims, and, above all, confiscate the profits from these criminal activities.”

“By applying the individual lessons learnt and by coming together with our combined skills, focusing on collective objectives, we plan to eradicate the remnants of [the online child porn] industry once and for all,” CEOP chief executive Jim Gamble said in a statement on the organization’s Web site.

The European Commission remains at arm’s length, operationally, from the EFC but has committed over (US)$500,000 to back the group’s efforts.