On a chilly winter evening, with lots of rain and aquaplaning, a Duvel beer logo lights up red on the facade of a pub. More flickering red neon lights follow, on the busy Staatsbaan in Bekkevoort, not far from Leuven. Boys Club, Cupid, El Patio…
This is the so-called Chaussée d’Amour. Traditionally, more than thirty brothels were located here, serving the apparent needs of soldiers stationed nearby at the time, but today there are only a handful of clubs left. Customers are promised “sensuality and discretion”, “a stone’s throw from the E314”.
The dozens of sex workers who work in the brothels here do not always have an employment contract. If they already have one, they are registered as a hairdresser, healthcare or catering worker or beautician. “False statutes,” agrees Arabelle Moreels, who employs nine prostitutes in this roundabout way at ‘Alexandra’s erotic massages’ at number 43.
That’s going to change. Since this month, new legislation has come into force, which means that Belgian sex workers can legally work as employees. A world first.
And so ‘Daisy’, “my working name” – blonde, wearing glasses, dressed in a transparent, black kimono with lace – will soon no longer be registered as a receptionist at the erotic salon. She has been offering her body for payment for two years and has been employed by Moreels since last summer. Her children and ex-partner have no idea about “the job of her life”. There is “too great a social taboo on it.” Hence her request to remain anonymous (her real name is known to the editors).
End-of-year bonus
“This work? A matter of a high libido,” Daisy smiles. “I need money for the children. Before this I worked in healthcare, but this pays a lot better.” She considers it a “great asset” that sex work is recognized as a full-fledged profession in Belgium. It means more rights and guarantees – such as the right to a pension, an end-of-year bonus, sick leave, unemployment benefits and maternity leave – and more safety. Employed sex workers have the contractual right to reject a client or refuse certain sexual acts – without the threat of dismissal. Although the latter is already a practice in her salon, manager Moreels says: “My girls were already allowed to refuse customers, they already had condoms and an emergency button in the room.”
Her mother could never have imagined that Moreels – also a sex worker herself – officially employs prostitutes. About forty years earlier, he was “forced into sex work”, also at the Staatsbaan. She worked behind the bar, where under the bar there was a book with photos of girls to choose from with a beer, Moreels says. Her mother even ended up behind bars, as a ‘madam’.
Six massage rooms
UTSOPI, the Belgian organization of sex workers, estimates the number of sex workers in Belgium between 10,000 and 25,000. Figures are difficult to verify, partly because ‘home reception’ is on the rise.
Bringing sex work under the labor law makes it easier to control, the Belgian government reasons. Professor Gert Vermeulen, a criminologist at the University of Ghent and specialized in sexual abuse, calls the step “essential”. Ever since Belgium decriminalized sex work (except for its exploitation) in 2022, he has been advocating the further normalization of the ‘oldest profession in the world’.
In the Netherlands, sex work was legalized in 2000, with the brothel ban lifted. Ideally, prostitutes have since worked legally as self-employed, in private clubs or brothels. An employment contract is not an issue. Working independently from home is a sensitive issue locally, and many municipalities do not allow it.
The fact that employer status has now been removed from the Criminal Code in Belgium does not mean that the taboo on sex work will disappear. Operator Kris Reekmans, Moreels’ husband and business partner, experiences the complexity of doing business in the sex industry every day, he says. “Taking out insurance or loans is a disaster. Lease car? Whoa. We want to expand, but we keep hitting walls,” he says, as he walks into one of the six massage rooms, switching on the low beam. The dark room contains a large bed, jacuzzi, “tactically placed” mirrors, candles and a large massage mat. “For the nuru massages, with Japanese seaweed gel. ”
Part-time escorts
According to Professor Vermeulen, the new law does not change anything for people who do sex work as self-employed or part-time. “This step does not yet sufficiently capture the reality. There are many people in the profession who are not looking for a main job as a sex worker.” According to him, more flexibility is needed, which also appeals to part-time escorts or students. Although independent or secret work often beckons and pays more, he acknowledges. “High class escorts sometimes earn up to 3,000 euros per hour, which you will never achieve on a contract.”
If we start criminalizing the customer, many eyes will be lost
And what does the law mean for combating forced sex work and human trafficking? The line between exploitation and exploitation is sometimes paper-thin. There is also the problem of illegality. Some of the sex workers in Belgium do not have valid residence papers and are therefore not entitled to an employment contract. Just when Belgium is making the world press by recognizing sex work as an official profession, Flemish media are reporting on Latin American sex workers who work under poor conditions in Flemish villages. Local public prosecutors are conducting about twenty investigations into these South American prostitution networks, which, according to the Belgian Public Prosecution Service, are taking the place of Eastern European and Chinese networks. The Dutch police report the same problem.
In May, the European Union reached an agreement on the new human trafficking directive. Member States are now obliged to criminalize customers who knowingly use the sexual services of a victim of human trafficking. The Netherlands has already come this far. “In Belgium today you can still have sex in a back room in Brussels, in deplorable circumstances, without being punished for it,” said Professor Vermeulen.
Erotic companies in Belgium at the Staatsbaan in Bekkevoort, not far from Leuven.
Photos: Wouter van Vooren
Most seductive zone
Organizations that stand up for human rights (including UNAIDS, the World Bank, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) are critical of the new EU rules. Daan Bauwens, director of UTSOPI: “Customers are an important source of information for suspected cases of human trafficking. If we criminalize the customer, many eyes will be lost.” According to him, can the new labor legislation be a weapon in the fight against human trafficking? “There is a risk that sex workers with employment contracts will still be intimidated,” he says.
In the port city of Ostend he visits Hangar N°1, an old warehouse near the station, which will open its doors next summer after a renovation as Ostend’s ‘most seductive zone’. There will be a brewery, a rooftop bar, creative workspaces and 36 rooms intended for sex workers. These will all be self-employed or undeclared workers, admits owner Franky De Coninck, also owner of ‘House of Pleasure’ Villa Tinto in Antwerp. “I don’t start contracts, that’s not my business.”
I don’t start contracts, that’s not my business
He steps around the puddles into one of the future duplex rooms (25 m2“that space is needed, among other things, for SM activities”). De Coninck said he was approached by the Ostend city council to give the warehouse a new purpose – including windows. This was also the case in Antwerp, more than twenty years ago. De Coninck then wanted to build a large office complex in a building in the heart of Antwerp’s red light district, the Schipperskwartier. “The local government, on the other hand, aimed for a window prostitution building.”
That is “crazy”, says 48-year-old window prostitute Sandra from Ostend (surname known to the editors). On the wall hangs an erotic poster by the American photographer George Holz, with the caption ‘Flesh of my flesh’. “The city is the pimp here.” Working on contract? She shouldn’t think about it. “Nobody can touch my independence.”
Biometric control
Director Bauwens expects that a maximum of five thousand sex workers will play it safe and ultimately opt for an employment contract. But for now that is a thing of the future. This is how the prostitution team of the Antwerp police answers questions from NRC “not to know of any business in Antwerp that wants to work with employment contracts.”
At the shipyard in Ostend, the height of the washbasin is being considered. “It is higher than usual, at the request of the sex workers, just imagine why,” says De Coninck.
He points out emergency buttons, lighting (red for working hours, white for cleaning hours) and explains the biometric control system. “Every hour the sex workers have to give their fingerprints, if not, the lights, heating and water supply go off.” Subletting to unverified persons, minors or illegal immigrants is thus prevented. The rooms can be rented in two shifts (day or night), for 110 euros.
Another pressing issue: “The local public prosecutor’s office has asked me to collect tax contributions in addition to the rent that should be used for social security contributions,” says De Coninck. Bauwens, astonished: “We are going to find out whether that is legal.” He explains: “The new legislation is aimed at taking power away from the employer. But if you ask landlords to pay the social security contributions of self-employed sex workers, you create a different kind of dependency.”
And the customers, does the new law make any difference to them? Moreels doesn’t think so at the Staatsbaan in Bekkevoort. “Our guests are mainly concerned with their own happy ending.”
