World P4P News

Spain's Socialist Party (PSOE) has been defeated in its attempt to re-criminalize legal sex work in Spain. A controversial law it attempted to pass failed to gain parliamentary support among its allies in its ruling coalition.

The proposed law had been loudly opposed by sex workers, sex worker rights groups and the local adult industry.

The traditionally left-leaning PSOE was counting on the ultra-Catholic elements within the opposition right-leaning PP to provide some support for the law, but a critical mass of PP's parliamentarians withdrew their support from the reviled Abolition of Prostitution law.

The vote ended with 122 in favor, 184 against and 36 abstentions.

Sex workers pointed out that the original goal of the Only Yes Means Yes law -- which was an earlier law which some feminists in the PSOE mutated into a sex-work abolition bill -- was to enshrine the idea of consent in Spanish law, but that its backers ended up not criminalizing nonconsensual deep fakes and deplatforming consensual sex workers instead.

The decriminalisation of sex work in Belgium was approved by Federal Parliament on March 18th 2022 and came into effect on 1st June 2022. However, under the new law it remained illegal for sex workers to work under an employment contract. This left sex workers with the choice between self-employment or a semi-legal contract in a grey zone with no guaranteed rights or protection.

In response, the Belgian Labor, Health and Justice Cabinets worked with sex worker-led organisations to develop a labour law for sex work. On 2nd May 2024, this law was approved by Belgian federal Parliament. The law enables sex workers to work under an employment contract and gain access to social protection benefits.

The sex worker trade group, UTSOPI, wrote of the new law:

In the first place, this means access to social security: pension, unemployment, health insurance, family benefits, annual vacation, maternity leave, etc. At the same time, the law ensures that sex workers in the workplace are protected from work-related risks and not anyone can become an employer.

Central to the new law are the freedoms of sex workers: any sex worker may choose to refuse a client or a sexual act, interrupt an act or perform it however they wish. Those who wish to become employers must not have incurred convictions for serious crimes, must appoint a reference person for the sex worker's safety and provide an alarm button that immediately connects to the reference person.