France May Limit Prostitution

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, August 12, 2002

France May Limit Prostitution

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Nicolas Sarkozy, President Jacques Chirac's new tough-talking interior minister, has announced plans to introduce legislation this fall that would allow the immediate deportation of prostitutes who are from outside the 15-country European Union. (Prostitution is legal in France, and under EU rules, citizens of other union countries have a legal right to live and work here.)

Sarkozy, whose expanded portfolio has made him a kind of French security czar, was responding to growing concern among Parisians over the proliferation of mostly young prostitutes on city streets. The wave began more than a decade ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall and continued through the Balkan wars of the 1990s that led Bosnians and Albanians to flee to French cities.

France has between 15,000 and 20,000 prostitutes, according to estimates of various associations, and more than half of them ply their trade in Paris. More than 60 percent are believed to be foreigners. The East Europeans are mostly from Albania and Romania. Africans from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Benin and Cameroon make up the next largest contingent. And women on the streets say they have noticed an increasing number of Chinese joining their ranks.

In France, the situation remains murky. Prostitution is legal, but open soliciting is not. Brothels have been illegal since 1946, but thinly disguised "lounge bars," "private clubs" and "massage parlors" function relatively openly as de facto brothels, complete with narrow beds tucked away in dingy back rooms.

Although French prostitutes like Sarkozy's proposal to target foreign women, many people who study the trade see serious problems in the deportation plan.

Source: Agencies

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