Strasbourg, 26/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 26 February, MEPs voted through an own-initiative report by Mary Honeyball (S&D, the United Kingdom) by 341 votes to 139 and 105 abstentions on prostitution and sexual exploitation, calling for clients, not prostitutes, to be punished.
The rapporteur said: “We send a strong signal that the European Parliament is ambitious enough to tackle prostitution head on rather than accepting it as a fact of life”.
The MEPs believe that one of the best ways to combat prostitution and trafficking of women and girls is the Scandinavian model, followed in Sweden, Iceland and Norway, that views prostitution as a violation of human rights and as a form of violence against women and criminalises those who buy sex rather than those who sell it.
The MEPs call on member states to reduce demand for prostitution by shifting the crime to the client and to set up exit schemes to support women who want to get out of prostitution and help them find other sources of income.
The Parliament does not recommend depolarising prostitution or legalising pimping because this would do nothing to help vulnerable women and girls. Honeyball commented: “Rather than blanket legalisation - which has been a disaster in Holland and Germany - we need a more nuanced approach to prostitution, which punishes men who treat women's bodies as a commodity, without criminalising those who are driven into sex work.” (MD)