Politics
The coalition of Social Democrats and the Green Party that governed the country from 1998 until late 2005 attempted to improve the legal situation of prostitutes in the years 2000–2003. These efforts have been criticized as inadequate by prostitutes' organizations such as HYDRA, which lobby for full normality of the occupation and the elimination of all mention of prostitution from the legal code. The conservative parties in the Bundestag, while supporting the goal of improving prostitutes' access to the social security and health care system, have opposed the new law because they want to retain the "offending good morals" status.
The churches run several support groups for prostitutes. These generally favor attempts to remove stigmatization and improve the legal situation of prostitutes, but they retain the long term abolitionist goal of a world without prostitution and encourage all prostitutes to quit.
Alice Schwarzer and her branch of feminism rejects all prostitution as inherently oppressive and abusive; they favor a law like that in Sweden, where in 1999 after heavy feminist lobbying a coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and leftists outlawed the buying but not the selling of sexual services.
In 2005, the ruling grand coalition of CDU and SPD announced plans to punish customers of forced prostitutes, if the customer could reasonably have been aware of the situation. In April 2009 it was reported that the plans would provide for a penalty of up to 5 years in prison. The law had not been enacted when the center-right CDU-FDP coalition came to power in November 2009.
Read more about this topic: Prostitution In Germany
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