OT: Is prostitution legal in Europe?

Hi!

Mark J. Reed writes:
> Well, yes, the US is amazingly conservative overall.  Probably has
> something to do with the fact that we were founded by the folks who
> got kicked out of Europe for being too uptight.  Apparently 400 years
> isn't long enough to get over that.
>     Still, AFAIK, prostitution is still illegal in most of Europe (the
> Netherlands being an obvious exception).
>...
Is it?  I would think the opposite is true and most European countries
tend to start giving it a proper legal status so you get benefits of
social and health insurance, and they also tend to make regular health
checks official etc.

Let's collect a list.  I used Google and Wikipedia, the strongest
allies for gathering reliable information, to start a list:

allowed:     Prostitution   Running brothels

Netherlands: yes            yes
Germany:     yes            yes
France:      yes            no
Spain:       yes            no
Italy:       yes            no
Greece:      yes            yes

But please complete the list at will.

Actually, I think Amsterdam started to 'clean up' that well-known
neighbourhood where the mixture of restaurants, bars, coffee shops,
mushroom shops, and sex shops was quite unique.

**Henrik

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