European rights court upholds French law against buying sex

A French law criminalising clients of prostitutes does not infringe on the European Convention on Human Rights, the continent’s top rights court ruled Thursday.

A group of 261 men and women sex workers had turned to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over the 2016 law, which threatens buyers of sex with fines of up to 1,500 euros ($1,630), which can be more then doubled for repeat offenders.

The rarely-enforced law was hailed as a major step forward by campaigners hoping to eliminate prostitution.

But the claimants backed by around 20 associations said it had pushed them into the shadows and increased their risk of harm, including assault and infection with sexually transmitted diseases.

After failing with their challenge in French courts, they turned to the Strasbourg-based ECHR in 2019.

They argued that the law endangers their physical and mental health, as well as harming their own and their clients’ right to a private life and sexual freedom under the Convention’s Article 8.

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were “already present and observed before the adoption of the law” in 2016, being attributed at the time to the since-repealed law against soliciting.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

French authorities had “struck a fair balance between the competing interests at play,” they added, finding no violation of Article 8.

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AFP

(NAMPA / AFP)