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Sex Trafficking and Prostitution in Germany

• Prostitution is legal in designated areas in Germany.
• Germany has a severe sex trafficking problem.
• Most of the women are trafficked from Eastern Europe.

In December 2001, Germany legalized pimping and prostitution, and officially stated that prostitution is no longer to be seen as immoral. The estimated turnover from bars, clubs, and brothels connected to prostitution is $4.5 billion per year. There are an estimated 400,000 women in prostitution in Germany.

• 75 percent of the prostitutes are foreigners.
• 80 percent of the trafficked women in Germany are from Central and Eastern Europe countries.

Trafficking in women has grown over the past decade. In 1993, there were 517 cases of illegal sex slave trade; in 1996, the number was 1,094.

Countries that have legalized prostitution in order to regulate it are still faced with serious problems of sex trafficking. Organized crime groups continue to traffic victims and run illegal prostitution operations along side the legal businesses. Where prostitution is legal, both trafficking and prostitution have increased because men can legally buy sex acts and pimps and brothel keepers can legally sell and profit from them.
In Germany, lawmakers thought they were going to profit from legalized prostitution from the tax revenue. But recently, the Federal Audit Office estimated that the government has lost over two billion euros a year in unpaid tax revenue from the sex industry, and lawmakers have started to look for ways to increase collection of taxes from prostitutes. ….

The normalization of prostitution as work has not occurred in Germany, the Netherlands, or Australia. Legalization was supposed to provide women with benefits and the right to join unions, but few women have signed up either. The reason has to do with the basic nature of prostitution. It is not work, a job like any other. It is abuse and exploitation that women only engage in if forced to or when they have no other options. Women and children controlled by mafias and criminals cannot register with an authority or join a union. Unionization of “sex workers” is a fantasy, because it is incompatible with the coercive and abusive nature of prostitution.

• Regional and city officials are involved in planning and providing “sex huts” or “sex garages” for prostitution during World Cup Games
• Officials accommodate the demand for prostitution and provide for their anonymity
• Officials estimate that 3 million fans will buy sex while at World Cup Games
• 40,000 extra prostitutes are expected to be brought into Germany during this time. Many of the women in prostitution in Germany are trafficked; many of the additional women brought in for the World Cup will be trafficked as well
• “Mega-brothels,” which house up to 100 women and operate 24 hours/day, are being built
• Officials in 12 cities that will host the World Cup games plan to provide special licenses for prostitutes so they can offer sex on the street. 

City officials are adopting a “pragmatic” approach to the situation

Next year's soccer World Cup will be a boon to a host of German businesses, not least, the sex trade. One host city already has an answer as to where all those extra transactions will take place.

One of the seedier spin-offs of the soccer world cup that will take place in Germany in 2006 is expected to be a boom in the local sex trade. And that's raising a host of concerns and considerations. Moral issues aside, order-loving city officials in Dortmund have at least addressed the logistics of the pending flurry of entrepreneurial activity.

After all, prostitutes will need places to service their clients. And Dortmund officials are determined that those places should ideally be removed from public streets, parks and residential areas. Not surprisingly, the solution has been imported from Germany's liberal northern neighbor, the Netherlands, in the form of a series of drive-in wooden "sex huts."

"In Dortmund, we have an official red light district on the outskirts, but there is a problem. There is not enough space for everyone to park," a city official said.

Dortmund plans to arrange the huts in an area complete with condom vending machines and snack bars. The huts have also been introduced in Cologne, another World Cup venue.

"Men have to get used to them of course, but a high percentage accept them because they can protect their anonymity," the official said.

Experts estimate that as many as 40,000 prostitutes will travel to Germany to offer their services to soccer fans during the tournament.

Berlin, Aug 8 (DPA) Germany's sex industry here hopes to notch up its own successes during the 2006 World Cup. From street prostitutes to the up market escorts of flashy clubs, sex workers are preparing a major offensive to find clients among the millions of fans - most of them men - that will take part in this sporting mega event.

Prostitution has been just one more career in Germany since 2001, when the Social Democratic-Green government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder approved a law legitimizing sex workers but made sure they paid taxes. From that point on, their profession ceased to be considered immoral or contrary to the public good.

So long as their papers are in order, they are in the country legally and have not been forced into prostitution; neither the women nor their clients need to fear police crackdowns and the like.

The powers-that-be seem to have recognized the economic potential of the industry.

In Cologne for example - a city of one million located on the Rhine - the municipality introduced a "sex tax" of 150 euros ($180) per prostitute, per month two years ago. This is on top of the income tax licensed prostitutes must pay.

In Cologne, one of the host cities of the World Cup, city authorities have put up a complex of custom-built cabins on the outskirts of the city, where escorts can attend to clients out of sight of the rest of the city. In so doing, they keep prostitution out of dirty car parks and away from cheap hotel rooms and dark street corners.

These pre-built units, that Germany's bureaucrats have christened "Verrichtungsboxen" - something akin to "action boxes," action of the sexual kind, of course - seem more like garages. They were imported from Utrecht, where the idea was first tried.

In these custom-built "garages" that the women call "boxes" or "singles", the clients drive in directly with their cars. The units are built in such a way that the driver cannot open the main door, but the workers have enough space to get out and away if attacked. The units also contain an emergency alarm, basic sanitary facilities and bins to throw out used condoms.

According to the authorities in Cologne, the units have helped move sex workers out of the city centre and have reduced attacks on the women by clients and pimps. The latter are also banned now from the complex, which was set up almost four years ago. So far, it is a unique project in Germany - one that is jointly funded by city authorities, the police and the Social Service of Catholic Women at an annual cost of 480,000 euros.

In Berlin, local authorities are also seeking their own solutions to this issue that might range from setting up their own "action boxes" to handing out free contraceptives. What's more, in the capital, one of the main hubs of the World Cup celebration - sex workers will soon have their own massive new workplace.

Shortly before the World Cup gets going, a new brothel of 3,500 square meters will open - some 20 minutes on foot from the Olympic Stadium. It will have space for around 100 sex workers and 600 clients.

"Everything will be better - more elegant, cleaner," insists Norman Jacob, the spokesman of "Artemis", who describes the place as the classy alternative to street prostitution.

The new club, which bears the name of the Greek god of innocence, will include a spa with Jacuzzi, a sauna, a Turkish bath, movie theatre and a round-the-clock dinner buffet. It will cost 100 euros ($120) to go in - on top of which clients must pay prices fixed by the girls.

"These will be around 50 euros ($60) per half hour. Extra services cost more," Jacob said.

The "World Cup brothel", as it has come to be labeled by Berlin's press, will be one of the biggest sex houses in Germany. And it will open its doors with the blessing of local authorities.

"If they guarantee that in the "mega-brothel" they don't force women to practice prostitution and they help them in emergency situations, it will make a positive contribution," Konrad Freiberg, president of the Union of German Police, told the Germany Press Agency (DPA).

In June, Europe's biggest brothel - Cologne's "Pascha" - a huge building of 11 floors that services more than 30,000 clients a month launched special offers to attract the journalists that came to cover the Confederations Cup - the "dress rehearsal" for the World Cup.

The club organized a photo session for the press, attended by its nearly 200 female workers. It also offered journalists the chance to go on guided tours of the city accompanied by some of the women.

A spokesman for the institution confirmed that the offer will be repeated at the World Cup - a tournament that seems destined to give a lift to other industries besides tourism and construction.

It is only a short bus ride from Germany's main World Cup stadium and it boasts a Turkish bath, two saunas, two cinemas and up to 100 prostitutes offering round-the-clock sex.

Europe's biggest brothel, which opened in Berlin only two months ago, is Germany's latest answer to the invasion of "sex-workers", who are expected to flood the country next year to cater for male soccer fans.

Predictions suggest that up to three million fans will visit a prostitute at least once during the World Cup. The event's organizers are expecting at least 40,000 prostitutes to descend on Germany from throughout Europe to meet demand.

Artemis, the four-storey brothel located a mile and a half from Berlin's Olympic stadium, is an attempt bring the sex trade explosion under control in a country where prostitution is both legal and widespread.


From the outside, the 5m (3.4m) "establishment" resembles a luxury hotel tucked away on an industrial estate. Yet close up, the decorative balloon flying from the roof turns out to be a giant phallus. Inside, a handful of middle-aged punters were last week paying 40 each for a locker, bathrobe and access to the brothel's bars, whirlpools, massage parlors, cinemas and 46 suites decked out with mock zebra-skin bed covers, mirrors and bacchanalian pictures. Yet the sex itself costs extra.

Norman Jacob, a lawyer and spokesman for Artemis, says the brothel cuts out prostitutes' traditional reliance on pimps and virtually eliminates the chances of illegal eastern European "sex slaves" being employed on the premises. "All the girls here have to provide a tax number and proof of permission to work in the EU," he said. "They pay a 70 entrance fee, but they are free to negotiate the cost of their services with each client, which allows them to keep all the profits."

Xenia, one of the prostitutes, said the system worked in her favor. "I used to pay between 20 and 50 per cent of my takings to my organizer. Here I can keep the lot," she said.

Mega-brothels such as Artemis are being encouraged by the authorities as a means of combating illegal prostitution during the World Cup. Renate Schmidt, the outgoing family affairs minister, recently wrote to the German Football Association demanding it "rally behind police and the authorities to combat forced prostitution and people-trafficking".

Cologne, one of 11 other German cities hosting World Cup games, has followed Berlin and erected policed "sex garages" on the city's fringes. Each offers rudimentary facilities for prostitutes and their clients such as condom and snack vending machines. Similar plans are underway in Munich, where police predict the number of prostitutes is likely to rise 30 per cent.

"We don't want to destroy legitimate businesses, but we aim to root out the sex slaves who are being brought here,"

Some 175,000 women are already involved in prostitution in the county, according to the German Protestant Church, which is also part of the awareness campaign.

Another 40,000 prostitutes, mainly from eastern Europe, could come to Germany during the soccer World Cup, several associations fighting prostitution estimate.

The tournament is to be held in Germany from June 9 to July 9, and the anti-prostitution campaign's name refers to the red card given to soccer players for penalties forcing them to leave the pitch.