New proposal to legalise prostitution in Czech Republic. Earlier this year, the opposition Pirate Party, with the support of several NGOs and civic associations, reopened the long-standing debate with a proposal to regulate and de-facto legalise prostitution in the Czech Republic.
To be able to regulate prostitution, the Pirate Party highlighted that the Czech Republic would have to leave the United Nations Convention on sex-trade, officially known as the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others.
The current Czech government, however, appears unwilling to move in that direction. Reacting to the proposal, Finance Minister Alena Schillerova from the ruling ANO party said that legalising prostitution would not bring 1 billion Kc to the state budget, but half of that, at most β citing estimates from the Czech statistical office.
Schillerova pointed out that Czech prostitutes, often registered as freelance workers in other trades for example in massage parlors , were already de-facto taxed by the state. Schillerova also claimed that legalizing it would further stigmatize prostitutes, who would be forced to officially register as sex-workers.
Legalisation of prostitution: a long-standing debate in Czechia. The Czech Republic, as many other countries in Europe, has long debated about whether or not to legalize prostitution, a highly divisive issue among both politicians and the population.
