Comparison between Member States. Notes that approaches to address prostitution vary across the EU and target three key components of this system through the use of administrative or criminal law: people in prostitution, the purchase of sex i. Regrets the lack of reliable, accurate data comparable across countries related to prostitution, sexual exploitation, violence in prostitution and the impact of exit programmes; highlights the urgent need to further improve and better coordinate cross-border cooperation in collecting and exchanging reliable, accurate, anonymised data disaggregated by, but not limited to, gender, racial or ethnic origin, age, socio-economic class and nationality, which is comparable across Member States; calls, therefore, on the Member States to work even closer together with the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, the European Institute for Gender Equality and Europol in order to step up collaboration and exchanges of information and data and to examine their experiences based on these data;.
Reality in prostitution. Underlines the findings of several studies on the experiences of women in prostitution with abuse in childhood and adolescence 46 ; notes 47 , 48 , 49 that these experiences can lead to women and girls normalising prostitution; highlights, in this regard, the urgent need to strongly fight child abuse and points out the responsibility of families in all their diversity and all those with a duty of care for children, such as teachers and trainers, among others;.
Impact on women in prostitution. Notes that prostitution is not an individual act of a person renting his or her body for money, but rather it is a system organised for profit which is intrinsically violent, discriminatory and deeply inhuman and that operates as a business and creates a market where pimps plan and act to secure and increase their markets and where buyers of sex play a key role in boosting them;.
Underlines that an inherent element of agency is the capacity to give and withhold consent; notes that consent can only be given freely when there is no power imbalance between the people involved and when there is no use of threat, violence, deception or coercion; notes, further, that consent obtained through the giving or receiving of payments or benefits is baseless; notes, at the same time, that it can be extremely difficult for people to realise that they are victims, especially when they are not aware of their rights, and recalls the dynamics of an abusive relationship; underlines, in addition, that the voices of women in prostitution should always be listened to and recalls the need for informative, respectful educational and awareness-raising programmes to make women aware of their rights and obligations and give them agency and the possibility to make informed and free decisions about their private and sexual life;.
Points out the negative consequences of the decriminalisation of pimping and the purchase of sex, which, through the apparent societal normalisation of these activities, leads to an increase in the trafficking in human beings for sexual exploitation and conceals the reality of coercion, manipulation, violence and exploitation in prostitution, where a lack of language skills, vulnerabilities and precarious conditions are exploited to make women enter and stay in prostitution; regrets the fact that even the legalisation of prostitution, pimping and the purchase of sex does not mean an end to the stigma for women in prostitution;.
