(BRUSSELS) - The parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann on Thursday called for a Europe-wide alert system for abducted children, which they believe could have helped in their case.

The couple said they remained hopeful that their daughter was still alive.

"There is still hope ... We have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Madeleine has come to any harm," Kate McCann said.

The couple said they would not return to Portugal for the first anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance on May 3rd.

"It's going to be a private matter," Kate McCann told reporters in Brussels.

Her husband Gerry echoed that "we will certainly not go back on May 3," while voicing general support for a Portuguese plan for a reconstruction of the events surrounding Maddie's kidnapping.

"Obviously if it is a crime-watch style reconstruction... that's going to jog people's memories, then we would be very much in favour of that," he said.

On the main point of their trip, the McCanns said that a swift EU-wide alert system for abducted children could have helped locate their daughter, who disappeared from a Portuguese resort last May.

Since their daughter went missing, not far from the Spanish border, there have been reported sightings from Belgium to North Africa, but none of them substantiated.

The McCanns also urged EU member states to get their neighbours to sign up to the alert system to spread the swift search as wide as possible.

The couple presented European parliamentarians with a statement, urging EU member states to bring in such an EU-wide alert system, which they hope at least half of the 785 Euro deputies will sign.

"We implore you to support our declaration. Please don't wait until another child and family suffer as we have before agreeing to support the implementation of an alert system in Europe," Kate McCann said.

They told the EU lawmakers that a European system could be modelled on the one in the United States, which they said had helped recover 68 kidnapped children there in 2007.

At their later press conference Kate McCann stressed that "time is the enemy in the case of a missing child and the goal is to instantly galvanise the entire community to assist in the search for and safe recovery of that child."

The disappearance of the little girl last May prompted a worldwide publicity campaign by her parents -- who were themselves classified as formal suspects by the Portuguese police in September. They have strongly denied any involvement.

The McCanns are supporting the implementation of the US-style "amber alert" system which would swiftly deliver photographs of a missing child and any suspected kidnapper along with details of the case to media and authorities elsewhere in the EU.

The idea is not new, and has support from the European Commission as well as many MEPs, however such a system has not yet been backed by EU member states.

The McCanns said such a system would also take the burden off distraught parents such as themselves to keep their missing child in the public eye.

The EU has already introduced a missing children hotline number, but it has been widely publicised in only four countries.

France and, to a lesser extent, Belgium have more stringent rules in place, enabling national authorities to spread information about missing children swiftly after a confirmed case of abduction.

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