United Press International - July 23, 2002
Elizabeth Bryant

Here, clad in long black boots and a micro white dress, the 43-year-old Paris prostitute struts her stuff -- or as much of it as local residents and the city police will tolerate.

But not, perhaps, for much longer. Sex workers like Monica have never been the government's mascot of choice for promoting the City of Love. Now on these languid summer days, debate is raging over the future of France's estimated 15,000 prostitutes, half of whom work in Paris.

Several major French cities have recently adopted strict zoning ordinances against prostitution. Earlier this month, the leftist government of Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe announced an ambitious campaign to re-educate and retrain prostitutes to work in more socially acceptable professions.

On a national scale, legislation is being drafted to crack down on prostitution by fining and jailing clients and pimps. And most recently, France's new interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, jumped into the fray with proposed measures to expel foreign prostitutes from the country.

But the biggest controversy arguably swirls around a provocative proposal to institutionalize prostitution, possibly by re-establishing Paris' once-famed "maisons closes," or brothels.

"Why shouldn't prostitution take place in fixed areas -- in maisons closes or other structures -- that also allow for public health screening?" asked Francoise de Panafieu, the conservative mayor of Paris' 17th district, and a National Assembly lawmaker, during a June interview with the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

If de Panafieu's proposals are mostly generating outrage and snickering, they are hardly revolutionary.

Paris brothels were once seedy but unquestioned institutions, regulated by the city, visited by furtive French gentlemen, and captured in the gritty paintings of Toulouse Lautrec. But a feminist campaign in 1946 banned the maisons closes, sending prostitutes to streets like St. Denis and, more recently, to the wide boulevards rimming the city.

Faced again with an uncertain future, many prostitutes appear to discard all the competing proposals.

"The majority of streetwalkers work when they want, during the hours they want," said Corinne Monnet, head of Caberia, an organization that offers HIV information and health advice to prostitutes in the southeastern city of Lyon.

"If they're forced to work in brothels, they'll have bosses who will take a cut of their earnings. They won't have a choice in their clients, or be as free as they are now."

In July, Lyon passed a new law banning prostitution near schools, sports facilities and religious establishments. Police treatment has also been harsher, Monnet said, and cops have fueled face-offs between French and foreign-born prostitutes, straights and transsexuals. The effect, she said, has been disastrous.

"The women are afraid, and we don't know where they're hiding out," she said.

"It's a climate that's threatening everything we've done in HIV prevention over the past 10 years."

On the well-trafficked Rue St. Denis, in central Paris, half a dozen prostitutes were similarly critical.

"We're against restrictions, and we're against the maisons closes," said one middle-aged prostitute on Rue St. Denis, sporting platinum hair and a generous cleavage. She gave her name only as Marie Claire. "At any rate, none of this will happen. We live in a country supporting human rights and liberty." Only Monica appeared enthusiastic about legalizing brothels.

A mother of three, Monica said she began soliciting 15 years ago when her husband died. Today, she works three four-hour shifts a week, charging customers about $50 a service. But an influx of Eastern European and West African prostitutes have undercut her prices, she complained, and siphoned off customers.

"Prostitution has become degrading," Monica said. "The old girls respect hygiene. We use condoms. These new girls do just about everything."

"I'm for the maisons closes," she added. "At least we'll have security, like in Amsterdam. There's got to be an alternative to Rue St. Denis."

The regulation vs. prohibition debate has seesawed across Western Europe, where the sex trade remains a murky Catch-22. Prostitution is not outlawed in many European Union countries, like France. Yet prostitutes are often forbidden to solicit, or earn their living from sex.

Germany and the Netherlands recently institutionalized prostitution in state-supervised brothels. But Sweden adopted legislation penalizing clients and pimps, with stiff fines and prison terms. Prostitutes, considered the industry's victims, are spared under the Swedish plan, and offered re-education programs.

Tangling the debate are larger European concerns about women's rights, rising crime, surging illegal immigration and human trafficking.

In France, major cities report a dramatic influx of prostitutes from Moldavia, Ukraine, Nigeria and, most recently, China. Precise figures are impossible to find, since almost all are illegal immigrants. But the Paris City Hall, for one, estimates about 60 percent of the city's sex workers are foreigners.

"It's unfair to expel foreign prostitutes because many have filed papers for asylum," said Socialist lawmaker Christophe Caresche, who plans to introduce Swedish-style legislation to France's National Assembly in the coming weeks.

"But clients of prostitutes are accomplices in trafficking. I am persuaded we must fight prostitution by attacking the demand."

The French anti-prostitution campaign may well collide with new European Union realities. Last November, Luxembourg's European Court of Justice ruled in favor of Eastern European prostitutes barred from doing business in the Netherlands.

But the ruling applies to any Western European country tolerating the sex trade, so long as the prostitutes "had a reasonable chance of success."

"The European Court's decision was very important, but practically, it can't be applied everywhere," said Marieke Van Doorninck of the Dutch Institute for Prostitution, an Amsterdam-based research group.

"I don't really care what model European countries adopt," added Van Doorninck, who supports legalizing prostitution, "so long as prostitutes' rights are respected."

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