The European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) got off to a rocky start on Wednesday 25 January when it discussed a report proposing the criminalisation of sex clients. The subject will also be on the agenda for the negotiations on the directive to combat gender violence (see EUROPE 13098/11) and is far from being unanimously agreed.
Heléne Fritzon (S&D, Swedish), a European Parliament rapporteur on the subject, who was speaking on behalf of Maria Noichl (S&D, German), acknowledged that this debate was “highly contested [including] in all of our [political groups]”, and called for it to be approached in a spirit of compromise. While she does not “deny that a [minority] does this out of their free will”, her aim, she explains, is to protect the majority, who sell their services “because they don’t have any other alternatives, be it because of their precarious social economic situation or their migration history”, without “undermining the minority”.
An initial discussion on a position
While more disagreements had emerged during the debate on the gender violence directive, MEPs seemed to have heard the call for compromise.
Karen Melchior (Renew Europe, Danish) cautiously described the report as “a little bit one-sided”, saying that there is a need to clearly define “what a sex worker is and where it’s different from trafficking and abuse of situations”, as well as to include the people concerned in the design of the text. “We should not however just blindly victimise or deny sex workers their autonomy […] but we need to protect their fundamental rights”, she argued, highlighting access to health support and a professional career.
Despite her support for the report, Christine Schneider (EPP, German), in turn, called for nuance: neither the German model (legalising sex work) nor the Swedish one (see EUROPE 13107/12) is perfect. Moreover, she added that “demand isn’t just going to evaporate”, with the criminalisation of clients. “We must [...] reduce the prostitution market [while] making sure that we don’t create a shadow prostitution market, where women are in constant danger of violence and face dumping prices”.
Opposition in associations
“It’s not because you reduce demand, that you reduce the offer”, said Luca Stevenson of the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA) during a discussion with EUROPE. For him, the ban only increases precariousness and the risk of violence, especially towards more vulnerable groups such as the LGBTQI+ community or migrants, without reducing the number of workers. For example, “if you have three clients, you can refuse one because he’s too drunk, not paying or refusing to use protection. If you only have one for the day, you have less bargaining power”, he summarised. A better solution, he argued, would be to ensure better access to the labour market for sex workers.
To read the draft opinion: https://aeur.eu/f/53h (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)