‘Legalising prostitution means men are told by their government that it is perfectly okay to purchase a woman’.

The European Parliament’s Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee has voted through a report that recommends the adoption of the ‘Nordic Model‘ of prostitution laws.

Put forward by Mary Honeyball, Labour MEP for London, and Labour’s spokesperson in the European Parliament Women’s Rights Committee, the report recommends the European Union takes on the Swedish model of laws dealing with prostitution; these punish the clients rather than the sex workers.

This was the model recently voted through in the French parliament.

Fourteen of the European Parliament committee members voted in favour of the Swedish model, two against and six abstained.

This sends a strong signal about Europe’s now changing position on prostitution laws.

The report can also now be put forward to the full European Parliament to vote on at one of the Strasbourg plenary sessions, most likely during the week starting 24 February.

The Nordic model has proved highly successful in Scandinavia, countries which generally have a high level of gender equality.

Scandinavia has also acknowledged the problems of exploitation within the sex industry, and their laws have also been supported by survivors both of prostitution and of sex trafficking.

Commenting on the vote, Honeyball said: “This is a fantastic outcome. It will form a key part of the sea-change taking place in the way we view prostitution across Europe.

“We are now a step closer to an approach which recognises the fundamental injustice that takes place when a man buys a women’s body.”

Pointing out that action taken by France – and Ireland – have switched the focus from the sex-worker to the men who purchase sex, and that Germany is re-thinking its laissez-faire system, she said she hoped that the European Parliament would now be able to lead from the front in making this shift more widespread.

This shift in approach on prostitution, the Guardian reported in December, is because of the transformation in the industry in recent years, with many more prostitutes now trafficking victims from overseas.

A recent European parliamentary report estimated there were about 880,000 people living in slave-like conditions in Europe, of whom 270,000 were victims of sexual exploitation.

Honeyball also called for the UK to finally take a stand in the whole issue.

As far as she is concerned, there are two alternatives for the UK. The first is the well-publicised Dutch model, which legalises both being a sex worker and using one. The second is the Nordic model, which legalises soliciting but criminalises prostitute use.

The United Nations favours legalisation on grounds of safety, while the women’s charity Equality Now supports the Nordic model.

And then there is the question of what works as far as policing goes.

Prostitution is addressed as sexual exploitation within the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Violence Against Women (VAW) strategy because of its gendered nature, and the CPS maintains that there is a need to adopt a multi-agency approach and work with voluntary sector organisations to enable those involved in prostitution to change their lifestyles and to develop routes out.

Prostitution is on the rise in Britain; poverty has driven many women into the sex industry since the recession hit, with single mums especially vulnerable.

Then there are the strong links between street prostitution and the drug markets.

Blanket criminalisation, Honeyball wrote in a recent article in the Huffington Post, clearly isn’t working.

It doesn’t address the core problem, and sometimes perpetuates it; prostitutes are convicted, criminalised, have less of a route out than before, and thus return to the sex industry. A subterranean economy is created, which is demeaning at best and dangerous at worst.

So, if the current system is failing, then where does the UK go from here?

For, as Rachel Moran wrote in an article in the Independent, men have a choice. They do not need to have sex available to them.

Legalising prostitution would mean men are being told by the government that it is perfectly okay to purchase a woman.

But, as Moran said, women are not commodities to be bought and sold.