Brussels: Europe’s Pimp City

A short walk south from the European Parliament building in Brussels is the Avenue Louise, the Belgian capital’s answer to the Champs-Elysées — a three-kilometre stretch of high-end restaurants and luxury hotels in handsome Beaux-Arts buildings. Some come here for the designer boutiques. Others come for sex.

At night, women cluster around the most exclusive addresses in tiny skirts, towering heels, and fishnets. They are looking for men who will take them to their apartments or hotel rooms; they would refuse the back seat of a car. “These women are high class,” a local bartender tells me. “They look for clients with money.”

Outside his bar, I watch a tall black woman enveloped in fake-fur approach an elegant-looking man with swept-back silver hair and a well-tailored suit. The pair turn together and enter a smart hotel close by. The concierge swings open the door, bidding them a pleasant evening.

Belgium, famous for its chocolate, beer and EU officials, has more recently acquired a less salubrious notoriety: in 2022, it became the first country in Europe to fully decriminalise its entire sex trade. The legislation removed what activists termed “voluntary sex work” from the scope of the criminal law and invited pimps, brothel and escort agency owners to see themselves as legitimate businesspeople.

Then in 2024, following further lobbying from pro-prostitution activists, Belgium went further, offering formal employment contracts to women who work as prostitutes in licensed brothels; coercing others remains illegal, with unlicensed pimps liable for steep penalties. In theory, this should mean that Belgium’s estimated 30,000 women in prostitution are now workers just like any other — with access to maternity leave, sickness and holiday pay, and union membership. This, supporters of the legislation claimed , would “[lay] the groundwork for broader societal change in the perception of sex work and sex workers”. But has it?

In practice, these labour contracts are not available to students, part-time workers, or women without work or residency visas. Given the majority of women in the Belgium sex trade are trafficked — and therefore undocumented — they are excluded. So too are those in the “sugar babe” trades, stripping and porn. In fact, so far only four businesses have been legally recognised as legitimate brothels, compliant with the new laws.

In other words, the majority of women in this “business” are excluded from legislation that activists celebrated as “transformative” and “historic”. To date, there have been no cases in which a “brothel worker” has been granted sick leave, maternity pay, or taken a case against a brothel manager to an employment tribunal. Belgium has contrived to empower every one of its pimps and open up unparalleled choice for the male sexual consumer — while doing almost nothing to improve the lives of the women whose “work” makes any of this possible.

“Belgium has contrived to empower every one of its pimps and open up unparalleled choice for the male sexual consumer — while doing almost nothing to improve the lives of the women whose ‘work’ makes any of this possible.”

On the outskirts of the city, far from the polished facades of Avenue Louise, the trade is far less glossy. George operates his business from a former family home on a residential street, advertising on the internet. From the outside there is little to distinguish his property from his neighbours. Inside are three cluttered rooms, their walls adorned with pornographic art, including an almost life-size painting of a naked woman on all fours, with a man penetrating her from behind. George tells me he has “many regulars”.

Though he’s currently operating without a licence, George hopes to become what Belgium’s new legislation terms a “brothel manager” — that is, a legal employer, entitled to hire women as “sex workers” under formal contracts.

George is keen to convince me that it’s all about giving “proper rights to the girls”, and “doing the right thing”. He speaks the language of regulation fluently. But then, he shows his hand: “I want to have a reliable workforce,” he says. “If they work for me, instead of just doing a shift when they feel like it, I have more control.”

Like all pimps, he’s in it for the profit. And if George gets his licence, in the eyes of the law he will no longer be a pimp: he’ll be a respectable businessman with a “reliable workforce” doing his bidding.

Still, the fact that so few sex businesses — just four — have so far been given the green light from the authorities reflects the grim realities of the trade, which can be gleaned from the official guide to occupational health and safety in the sex trade in New Zealand, which decriminalised prostitution in 2002 and is a model for countries like Belgium. It addresses condom breakage, repetitive strain injury, violence from punters, and rape — described in the document euphemistically as an unfortunate occupational hazard which occurs “wh…