In the ten years since France passed a law decriminalising prostitution, but making it illegal to pay for sex, investigators have shifted their approach to sex workers to consider them as victims and not criminals. But it has become difficult to identify clients, who increasingly operate online, behind closed doors and not in public.
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A decade after France passed a law criminalising the purchase of sexual services, authorities insist they are taking a tough approach to prostitution networks.
Adopted on 13 October 2016, after intense debate, the law punishes clients of sex workers with fines of €1,500 and up to €3,500 for repeat offences.
The 2016 law also decriminalised soliciting and set up support for people to leave prostitution.
Prostitution moving online
Ten years on, however, habits have changed. Once highly visible in public spaces, prostitution has shifted to private locations – short-term rental flats or hotel rooms – organised via online platforms, making it difficult for authorities to identify clients breaking the law.
“Clients are ordinary men,” the Central office for the fight against human trafficking, OCRETH noted. “Clients are of all ages and from all social backgrounds.”
Claire Quidet, spokesperson for the Mouvement du Nid, a sex worker advocacy group, points to the low number of sanctions against clients, and their uneven distribution around France: only 11,000 acts have been penalised, and 60 percent of them in the Paris region.
Hard to identify victims
It is also harder to identify sex workers in order to help them.
“Victims are increasingly invisible. They are regularly moved, from one week to the next, from one city to another, one apartment to another, to evade authorities, neighbours or associations,” Lénaïg Le Bail, former head of the OCRETH, told the French AFP news agency.
According to official estimates, more than 40,000 people, the vast majority of whom are women, are involved as prostitutes in France. And the number of minors has increased sharply, up 43 percent between 2021 and 2025, according to Miprof, the Interministerial mission to protect women against violence and human trafficking.
Investigators are focusing on trafficking networks and criminal gangs, even though many women work with one or two people, via online platforms like Onlyfans ou Mym.
“This requires almost no initial investment, and quickly becomes lucrative,” noted an expert report submitted to the government in 2021.
Support to leave prostitution
The law has changed how law enforcement approaches sex workers. They are now considered victims, and support systems have been set up to help them leave prostitution.
Victims are entitled to two years of support to find alternatives, including training and jobs. For those who are not French, this includes a work permit, and Quidet points out that this is significant, as most sex workers are foreigners.
However, the programme is not widely implemented
“After ten years of the law, there about 2,000 exits from prostitution across France, which is positive, but far too few,” Quidet told RFI at a demonstration Sunday calling for the abolition of prostitution in France and worldwide.
“We call on all police prefectures to be much more open to exit schemes, as these efforts are also hindered by immigration policies.”
The sex workers’ union Strass held discussion groups and debates in Paris on Sunday to encourage alternative approaches, as the 2016 has had a “disastrous impact” on the precariousness and security of sex workers.
(with newswires)
