Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you will allow me to speak on behalf of the as my colleague has had to accompany the Member who was taken ill. In my opinion, it is very fortunate that Mrs Sörensen should have been given the responsibility of preparing this report on trafficking in women. There are few rapporteurs who have such direct knowledge of this subject for Mrs Sörensen has been concerned for over 20 years with the issues of trafficking in women and prostitution. We should therefore place our full trust in her proposals. I myself totally support her report. However, I should like to comment briefly on the discussions held on this subject in committee and also in the Member States, given that the United Nations Conference on the situation of women throughout the world, to be held in New York in June, is now approaching. In these discussions several rather abolitionist associations have tried to lump together trafficking in women, prostitution and pimping. They have therefore encouraged a certain amount of generalisation and are, as a result, opposed to any form of debate on these issues, hiding behind moral considerations such as the inalienability of the human body and its treatment as a saleable commodity. To this end, they have attacked the latest report by the International Labour Office on trafficking in women and prostitution, and the work of Mrs Lin Lean Lim highlighting the need for a statute to protect prostitutes. They have also decried Europe as a pimp on the grounds that certain countries are trying to establish non-abolitionist legislation in this area. We surely cannot leave an issue such as this in the hands of associations of which some, and only some, having fought against abortion, are now refusing the distribution of condoms to prostitutes, which they see as encouraging prostitution. There is but a single step from commiseration to stigmatisation and from victimisation to contempt and exclusion from public debate. The only solution for prostitutes is to be integrated within a common law system, to look after themselves, to live decently, to defend themselves against the violence to which they are subjected by pimps, clients and institutions. The only solution is to recognise prostitutes as such and, as a first step, to give them a voice. Recognition of their professional activity, full social rights and police protection from any form of violence are what they are demanding. We must listen to them. Whether legislation is abolitionist as in France, prohibitionist as in Sweden or even sometimes regulatory, if it fails to recognise a whole population this can only reinforce discrimination against forced immigrants and also prostitutes, irrespective of whether they are immigrants or not. The ineffectiveness of the law reinforces the enslavement of male and female prostitutes by pimps, for some, and the impossibility for others of living with dignity or of getting out of prostitution. This leads to a breakdown in any fragile solidarity and further damage to their self-image. Mrs Roure is right in her analysis of this problem but we accept that different solutions must be examined and that various proposals must be made and considered. The Commission absolutely must examine all forms of common legislation on prostitution which would give real status to prostitutes in order to protect these women and men from pimping, violence and marginalisation.

Political group: Verts-ALE