Prostitution in Austria - Current Situation

Current Situation

Austrian cities do not have red-light districts like the Bahnhofsviertel (Frankfurt am Main), the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, or the De Wallen in Amsterdam; the sex industry is widely distributed over the cities and its presence often goes unnoticed.

In April 2007, 1,352 female and 21 male prostitutes were officially registered in Vienna. In 2003, the oldest prostitute was a 71-year-old Austrian woman, who offered her service in the second district of Vienna, the so-called Leopoldstadt. The number of women working legally and illegally at least from time to time as prostitutes is estimated between 3,500 and 6,000; it is estimated that they totally serve 15,000 clients per day. A similar relation of prostitutes to population number can also be found in other Austrian cities. For example, in 2008 there were 120 registered prostitutes in Linz, which has approximately 10% of the size of Vienna.

Before the Wende there was a relatively good cooperation between police and prostitution from which both sides had their benefits: The pimps were allowed to regulate their turf wars themselves; on the other hand they served as informants for the police. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, however, the situation changed. Many young women from the former Eastern bloc came to Austria and were willing to work for less money than the Austrian women. Additionally organized crime groups from southern and eastern Europe entered the prostitution scene in Austria. In the following years, in particular in the 1990s, the number of registered prostitutes decreased and the number of unregistered prostitutes increased. Nowadays 60 to 90 percent are migrants, mainly from the former east bloc countries, among them many commuters from the close Slovakia. For example, the police detained several nurses from Bratislava who earned more money in one night on the streets of Vienna than in a whole month in the hospital in Bratislava.

The Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior considers the illegal prostitution as a problem because it comes along with crimes like human trafficking, pimping and rape. In addition, unregistered prostitution creates health problems. A quarter of the arrested unregistered prostitutes had multiple infections with sexually transmitted diseases. On the other hand, according to the health authorities of Vienna, registered prostitutes are the most healthy group of persons. Because of this, the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior wants to transform illegal prostitution into legal regulated prostitution. Similar to the ministry, several human rights and migrants organizations who highlight the bad life and working conditions of prostitutes want a detabooization of prostitution and improve the working and social conditions of sex workers and to abolish the discrimination in the working rights and in the rights of residence. In early 2007 this topic was also discovered by politics and it was discussed to end the unconscionable state of prostitution and to find a legal regulation similar to the German law.

Support for (migrant) sex workers in Austria exists since the beginning of the 1990s through the NGO LEFÖ (Information, Education and Support for Migrant Women) LEFÖ is the Austrian partner of the pan-European network TAMPEP that provides HIV/STI prevention and health promotion among (migrant) sex workers. Other counselling centres for sex workers exist in Vienna (Sophie) and Linz (LENA). Additionally the organization Maiz in Linz offers consulting for migrants working in the sex industry. Since 2005, the group www.sexworker.at is a platform for sex workers and allies that is based in Vienna and operates in the German-speaking region. They are a self-organisation of sex workers and promote the recognition of sex work as legitimate activity and the self-determination and political inclusion of sex workers into decision-making and policy development, implementation and evaluation.

There is an increase of Nigerian prostitutes in Austria, whereby it was found out that many of them are victims of human trafficking and forced prostitution. The NGO Exit documents stories of these victims to increase public awareness. Furthermore, Exit counsels victims who seek help in special African dialects. Exit was initiated by Joana Adesuwa Reiterer, a Nigerian actress and writer based in Vienna who, after escaping a marriage with a pimp, started her research on human trafficking from Africa to Austria for sexual exploitation.