On Thursday the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of a French law from 2016 that radically overhauled the country’s laws on prostitution.

So what is the position now in the country that became famous for its legalised brothels, immortalised in the works of painters including Toulouse-Lautrec, Ingrès and Manet? 

History

It was Napoleon who laid out France’s long-standing legal code on lawful but regulated prostitution which saw state-sanctioned brothels known as maisons de tolérance or maisons close opening up in French towns and cities.

The legal position in France remained for a long time that prostitution was legal – albeit under tightly controlled conditions; registered brothels which were ‘discreet’ in appearance, prostitutes who were also registered and subject to regular medical inspections.

However in the period after World War II a series of laws were passed that first outlawed brothels and then criminalised behaviour including soliciting for sex, pimping and sex tourism.

The 2016 law

In 2016 a radical shakeup of the law was proposed, aimed at shifting the balance of power in favour of the people (mostly women) who sell sex.

It first repealed some older laws including the ‘Sarkozy law’ introduced in 2003 that made it a criminal offence to “be present wearing revealing clothing at a location known to be used for prostitution”.

But the main thrust of the law was to make it illegal to buy sex – but not illegal to sell sex, or to solicit it.

The idea was to remove the fear of criminalisation for people selling sex and therefore remove some of the barriers to people seeking help – for example to report a crime. The bill also came with a package of measures designed to help people working as prostitutes to leave the profession, if they want to, and enable them to leave exploitative or dangerous situations. 

It also included measures to give residency cards to the estimated 30,000 foreign people working as prostitutes in France – it is estimated that around 80 percent of sex workers in France are foreigners, the majority from eastern Europe or Africa.

Has it worked?

The intention was undoubtedly good, but many argue it has not worked – including the group of 20 sex workers who took France to the European Court of Human Rights over the law.

They say that criminalising customers means that sex workers are forced to work in more isolated and therefore dangerous places and that the drop in custom means that sex workers are being forced to accept customers that they might in the past have turned away.

The continuing ban on brothels means that sex workers must work alone, which raises their level of risk.

The main French prostitutes union Strass says: “It’s been a catastrophic law for our security and our health.”

However, the European judges rules that there is no evidence that the law itself was making sex work unsafe.

Judges said they were “fully aware of the undeniable difficulties and risks to which prostituted people are exposed while exercising their activity”, including their health and safety.

But they added that these were “already present and observed before the adoption of the law” in 2016, being attributed at the time to the since-repealed law against soliciting.

“There is no consensus on the question of whether the negative effects described by the claimants are directly caused by the… criminalisation of buying sexual acts, or their sale, or are inherent or intrinsic to the phenomenon of prostitution… or a whole array of social and behavioural factors,” the judges said.

So what exactly does the law say now?

Buying sex is illegal, punishable by a fine of up to €1,500, rising to €3,750 for repeat offenders. This applies whatever the situation – street prostitution, in a brothel or massage parlour or via an online transaction. 

Clubs including fetish clubs and swingers clubs are legal.

How strictly this law is enforced varies widely according to both place and time.

Selling sex is legal, as is soliciting for sex, however owning or operating a brothel is illegal. It is illegal to live off the earnings of a prostitute or to help or pressure someone to prostitute themselves.

Prostitutes are required to pay tax on their earnings and make an annual tax declaration in the same way as all other self-employed workers in France.

Prostitutes have a union and during the Covid pandemic qualified for furlough payments when they could not work.