Regulation in Hungary

[Sir Studley Smugley]

I very seldom stopped in Hungary and very cautiously circumnavigated Budapest. As a matter of fact, was very surprised to see a hooker hanging on the side of the E60 in 2005. I then had a stop for nice hooker in the area of Szolnoc in 2006 (Renata who screamed when being f..., but was above all very eager at money) and had a few fairly intersting experiences in August 2007.

As I found in the area of K

 

[AHM]

In an effort to bring prostitutes into the legal economy, officials said Monday, September 24th, 2007 that Hungary will allow sex workers to apply for an entrepreneur's permit -- a move that could generate government revenues from an industry worth an estimated $1 billion annually.

Human rights groups often have criticized European Union member Hungary for legalizing prostitution -- which has been fully allowed under certain conditions since 1999. Opponents say legalization does not help prostitutes.

The permits allow prostitutes to give receipts to customers and become part of the legal economy by paying taxes and making social security contributions, said Agnes Foldi, head of the Hungarian Prostitutes' Interest Protection Association.

Hungary's sex industry -- including prostitution and the production of pornographic materials -- generates an estimated $1 billion annually, said Agnes Bakonyi, the spokeswoman of Hungary's tax authority APEH.

"It is one of the leading sectors of the shadow economy," Bakonyi said. "With this project, APEH is trying to help a group of professionals, in what is called the world's oldest profession, who have never paid taxes in their life."

Prostitutes in Hungary, can work legally only within certain zones -- distant from schools and churches -- and must get regular medical checkups. Pimping and bordellos are banned.

Foldi said about 20 prostitutes already had been issued permits and more than 500 had applied to attend counseling sessions organized around the country with the help of APEH on issues such as financial planning and accounting, as well as legal matters.

"Our aim is to make sex work become accepted as any other job," Foldi said. "Prostitutes come from the poorest sectors of society ... and it's very hard for them to, for example, get a loan to buy their own home."

Foldi's group received a grant of $86,000 from the government's National Development Plan, which includes EU funds, to advise prostitutes on the licenses.

"It is important for us to have as many participants as possible," Foldi said, adding that there are about 7,000-9,000 full-time prostitutes in Hungary, rising to as many as 20,000 during the summer tourist season.

One of the prostitutes who already has been granted a permit said she applied for it in an effort to improve her future and self-image.

"From now on, no one will be able to ask me where I got the money to buy my house or my car," said Rebeka, who would not give her last name. "Now we are also part of a taxpaying group and we too are making a contribution to society."

Hungary is a signatory of the 1950 United Nations convention for the suppression of human trafficking and prostitution. But officials claimed the program did not go against the spirit of the convention because even though prostitutes would now be able to get licenses, the government would not keep a separate registry of them.

Critics say many prostitutes in western Europe are foreigners often lured there under false pretenses. They link prostitution to human trafficking.

Human Rights groups have said legalization and decriminalization of prostitution and the sex industry does nothing to address the violence of prostitution and does not help prostitutes.

Janice Raymond of the U.S.-based Coalition Against Trafficking in Women said by issuing entrepreneurial permits to prostitutes, Hungary is violating its international treaty obligations under the U.N. convention. She said countries such as Hungary that have ratified the convention agree not to regulate prostitution or subject women to any administrative controls such as registration and taxation.

"Hungary is not issuing entrepreneurial permits to aid the women in prostitution but rather to increase the state coffers with the additional taxes to be gained," Raymond told The Associated Press by e-mail.


Attached thumbnails : New permits allow prostitutes to give receipts to customers and become part of the legal economy in Hungary.

 

[alexander w]

Thanks to chatting with Fridolin, I discovered that I was not aware of a few rules regulating prostitution in Hungary. Prostitution is regulatedby the law on the protection of law and order (Bill T/5364) adopted in 1999. This text sets out the parameters for the regulation and partial legalisation of prostitution in Hungary: "In the interests of protecting the rules of coexistence universally accepted in society more effectively and of safeguarding order and peace in public places, the Hungarian Parliament enacts the following law:

General provisions

First paragraph. For the purposes of the enforcement of this law:

a) A prostitute shall be defined as an individual who offers sexual services in return for material recompense, regardless of the point in time when the recompense is paid and of whether the service resulted from the request of the person availing himself of it, or - with regard to the service itself - from the involvement of another individual;

b) A sexual service shall be defined as an activity, undertaken by the prostitute, which also requires physical contact with the person availing himself of the service and which is directed towards arousing the sexual desire of the person availing himself of the service and towards the gratification of that desire;

c) A public place shall be defined as any area held in private, state or local authority ownership, which may be used by anyone on an unrestricted basis, including public roads serving the public places and those parts of privately owned areas that are not closed off to public traffic;

d) A protected zone shall be defined as a section of public space defined by the current law or by the decree of the relevant (in Budapest the capital's and the metropolitan district's) local authority's (hereinafter referred to as local authority) corporation of representatives as an area in which a prostitute may not either offer or provide sexual services; the prohibitions pertaining to the protected zone shall also apply to the public premises [pubs, for example] situated within the protected zone;

e) Tolerance zones shall be defined as a zone designated by the local authority in a decree in cases where prostitution occurs on a large scale, and in which the prostitute may offer sexual services or may accept initiatives aimed at soliciting sexual services;

f) Prostitution on a large scale shall be defined as the simultaneous presence, on a continuous or seasonal basis, of a large number of prostitutes, a concentration of prostitutes in a single area of a kind that could disturb the peace of the habitation in question;

g) Offering sexual services shall be defined either as the prostitute's verbal propositioning of another individual in public places or in public premises (active propositioning), or as behaviour on the part of the prostitute alluding to the provision of sexual services (passive propositioning), as well as the acceptance of soliciting from the person wishing to partake of sexual services;

h) Propositioning involving harassment shall be defined as hindrance of the movement of other individuals and of the departure of vehicles driven by other individuals or causing a disturbance for others, verbal propositioning containing indecent or threatening language or behaviour on the part of the prostitute;

i) Tolerance of propositioning shall be defined as behaviour on the part of the managers or staff of public premises, which has the effect of encouraging the uninterrupted activity of prostitutes;

j) Individual pursuing press-related activities and providers of other information or news services shall be defined as natural and legal persons as well as societies without legal personality carrying out activities in conjunction with the production and publication of periodicals, radio and television programs, books, fly-sheets, other publications containing texts, entertainment films, video cassettes, video discs, audio tapes, audio discs and any other technical instrument prepared for the purposes of being made public or containing a program;

k) Public premises shall be defined as premises open to anyone, which may not be regarded as public spaces.


Restrictions on propositioning and on the provision and enjoyment of sexual services.

Paragraph two:

(1) The prostitute may not either proposition or provide sexual services:

a) In public places in habitations with a local population of less than 20,000;

b) On the areas of public roads intended for the traffic of vehicles;

c) Within 100 metres of dual carriageways, motorways, or main roads designated by one or two digits lying outside inhabited areas;

d) Within 50 metres of the main road within inhabited areas;

e) On, at or within 300 metres of buildings intended for public representation or state administration, courts, prosecutor's offices, for the fulfilment of educational, popular educational [in other words, not schools, but other learning establishments], child welfare, child protection and cultural tasks, of terminals for passenger traffic (airports, railway stations, piers), registered institutions where church services are held, as well as in cemeteries or other shrines and

f) In side streets where institutions for educating, bringing up, healing or lodging minors on a long term basis as well as where child welfare and child protection institutions carry out their activities.

(2) The prostitute may not offer sexual services within the protected zone.

(3) The prostitute may not provide sexual services within the protected zone on non-residential premises, in the shared areas of blocks of flats, or in areas used by the inhabitants of blocks of flats, in establishments situated in public places or in vehicles.

Paragraph three:

(1) Apart from in the protected zones listed in Paragraph two (1), the local authority may also prohibit the activity of prostitutes in other parts of public spaces and in individual public premises run there.

(2) In cases of prostitution on a large scale, the local authority may designate a tolerance zone by means of a decree.

(3) If tolerance zones have been designated, the local authority may prohibit the activity of prostitutes outside of the protected zone for the duration of events of public interest.

Paragraph four:

(1) The prostitute may only proposition individuals over the age of 18, and only individuals over the age of 18 may accept the offer of sexual services.

(2) Propositioning of one or several individuals in a harassing fashion is prohibited.

(3) The prostitute may offer sexual services if the prostitute is in possession of the medical certificate [testifying that the holder does not suffer from any sexually transmitted disease] stipulated in law elsewhere.[Since prostitution is considered to be a "dangerous business" entailing major risks to health, the doctor's certificate is designed to reduce the risks to a minimum.The prostitute is not called upon to undergo a medical examination as a worker in the sex industry, but is entitled to health screening on the same basis as any other citizen].

Paragraph five:

In the protected zone, soliciting the sexual services of others in return for recompense is prohibited. [This is a unique feature in Hungarian legislation.The potential client may neither solicit nor accept offers within the protected zone.The intention here is to close the loophole, which would otherwise exist if prostitutes could be approached within protected zones].

Paragraph six:

Propositioning in written, image or sound recorded form or by means of any other equipment is prohibited, as is the advertising of sexual services and collaboration in such deeds.

Paragraph seven:

(1) If individuals pursuing press-related activities and providers of other information or news services collaborate in the advertising of sexual services by anyone, a public peace fine of between HUF 100,000 and HUF one million may be imposed on them.

(2) The manager of public premises may be called to account according to the provisions of indent (1) if a resolution is adopted by the authorities in conjunction with outlawing prostitution and the manager continues to allow prostitutes to proposition on the public premises.

(3) Proceedings to be taken in relation to the instances set out in (1) and (2) fall under the jurisdiction of the police station."

The law also contains a number of clarifications and justifications:

"Until 1993, sexual services were prosecuted under both the petty offences and the criminal law statute, depending on whether the prostitute offered these services for money on a professional or on an occasional basis. In 1993, a trend emerged within legislation towards categorising individual prostitution - presumably accepting the abolitionist viewpoints - as a "private matter" of the prostitute regarded as the victim of crime. With the decriminalisation of soliciting in our criminal statute in May of 1993, the statute came closer to the spirit of the Convention signed in New York on the 21st of May 1950 on the repression of trafficking in human beings and the exploitation of others as prostitutes".

The 1993 law, however, contained a number of lacunae, which the current law was intended to address: "...the 1993 law, number 17, decriminalised soliciting, but intercourse in return for recompense, even if it occurred on a one-off basis, and fornication continued to be punishable offences. This level of violation of the law, however, proved to be trifling, both to society and to the individuals concerned, whilst the difficulty of providing proof and the large-scale occurrence of street prostitution, the inability to either manage it as a problem condemned the police force to helplessness and to defeat".

In order to counteract this, the new law sought to regulate prostitution in a way that would not cause offence (or real estate values to drop in residential areas!) to the public at large, decriminalising it in tolerance zones under the conditions specified, thereby recognising that it would not disappear as a phenomenon at the behest of the courts and police officers on the beat. By localising prostitution it was hoped that a further escalation in sex industry activity could be avoided and that pimping could be curtailed, albeit only in the long term.

As regards a possible repeal of Article 25 of the New York Convention (which bans the running of brothels), the law refuses to entertain such a notion: "It would not be expedient from the point of view of international law if we, precisely at the time of our accession to the EU, were to revoke this Convention, which is of such far-reaching significance, and which for the most part contains recommendations aimed at combating international organised crime".

Although there is very little tolerance of prostitution in certain areas ("Society in the affected areas is not, or at least not primarily, irritated by the prostitutes' verbal manifestation, but its indignation is triggered by the mere sight of prostitutes"), the local authorities are not allowed to impose a covert blanket ban on prostitution by refusing to designate a tolerance zone, as this would represent a breach of the Constitution. The same applies if the local authority's choice of tolerance zone comprises an area unsuitable for the commercial transaction between prostitute and client to take place, or if the local authority attempts to employ special restrictions, which would to all practical intents and purposes outlaw prostitution.

Some guidelines for the designation of tolerance zones are set out.The primary consideration must be to take account of the interests of local inhabitants. If the local authority does not have any suitable areas at its disposal for the establishment of a tolerance zone neighbouring authorities may be asked for assistance.


Source : http://www.ce-review.org/99/22/csardas22.html

The sources used in the writing of this article were: Bill T/5364; Magyar Nemzet, 5, 12 and 13 November 1999 and Nepszabadsag, 24 September 1999.
Links:
Magyar Nemzet online [in Hungarian]
Nepszabadsag online [in Hungarian]