Prostitution laws in France

The offence of racolage public ("le fait, par tout moyen, y compris par une attitude même passive, de procéder publiquement au racolage d'autrui", 2 months' imprisonment and €3,750) was inserted into the Code pénal as art. 225-10-1 by art. 50 of loi n° 2003-239 of 18 March 2003 and repealed by art. 15 of loi n° 2016-444. The 2016 law also created the parcours de sortie de la prostitution et d'insertion sociale et professionnelle (art. L. 121-9 Code de l'action sociale et des familles, inserted by art. 5 of the law): approved associations support the person, the prefect may grant a temporary residence permit to foreign nationals, and a monthly integration allowance (AFIS) is paid to those not eligible for other minimum benefits. The programme is voluntary; prostitution remains lawful whether or not a person joins it.

French case law defines prostitution as submitting, for payment, to physical contact of any kind to satisfy another person's sexual needs (Cour de cassation, criminal chamber, 27 March 1996, restated on 18 May 2022). Webcam services without physical contact therefore fall outside 'prostitution' under current law.

Art. 611-1 Code pénal (in force since 15 April 2016) covers the act "de solliciter, d'accepter ou d'obtenir des relations de nature sexuelle d'une personne qui se livre à la prostitution, y compris de façon occasionnelle" in exchange for remuneration, a promise of remuneration, a benefit in kind or the promise of one. Contraventions are criminal offences in French law, tried by the police court. Art. 225-12-1 makes repeat offending a délit (€3,750 fine) and sets 5 years' imprisonment and €75,000 where the seller is a minor or shows a particular vulnerability apparent or known to the buyer (wording since loi n° 2021-478 of 21 April 2021). Art. 225-12-2 raises those penalties to 7 years and €100,000 where the buying is habitual or involves several people, where the person was contacted through messages sent to an undetermined public over a communications network, where the buyer abuses authority, or where he endangers the person or uses violence; and to 10 years and €150,000 for a child under 15, unless the acts are prosecuted as rape or sexual assault. Since loi n° 2021-478, paid sexual penetration of a child under 15 is rape whatever the age difference. The stage de sensibilisation à la lutte contre l'achat d'actes sexuels was introduced by art. 21 of the 2016 law and organised by décret n° 2016-1709 of 12 December 2016; it is used both as a complementary penalty and as an alternative to prosecution.

The Conseil constitutionnel upheld art. 611-1 and the first paragraph of art. 225-12-1 on 1 February 2019 (décision n° 2018-761 QPC), finding that criminalising demand, to deprive procuring of its profits and fight trafficking, was not a manifestly inappropriate means, struck a balance with personal liberty that was not manifestly unbalanced, and carried penalties that were not manifestly disproportionate. In M.A. and Others v. France (25 July 2024, applications 63664/19 and others), a Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights unanimously found no violation of Article 8, while saying the authorities must keep a "general and absolute" ban under constant review.

Enforcement is concentrated: in 2025, 64% of the 1,442 buyer offences recorded by the police and gendarmerie (verbalisations, reports passed to prosecutors rather than fines) were recorded in Paris, and 22 départements recorded none (see stats).

Art. 225-10 Code pénal, items 1° to 4°. Legal persons can also be held criminally liable (art. 225-12). Convictions for tenue d'un lieu de prostitution are few: 239 between 2017 and 2024, between 15 (2019) and 41 (2023) a year, according to the Justice Ministry's criminal-records statistics published by the national observatory on violence against women.

Neither art. 225-5 nor art. 225-10 exempts sex workers themselves; art. 225-5 applies to "quiconque, de quelque manière que ce soit". Whether two people who work from the same flat are actually prosecuted depends on the facts (who rents, who profits, who organises), and this profile does not cite case law on co-working sex workers.

Art. 225-5 defines procuring; art. 225-6 lists conduct treated as procuring (acting as an intermediary between a person who engages in prostitution and someone who exploits or pays for it, providing a procurer with fictitious income, being unable to justify one's lifestyle while living with or in habitual contact with people who engage in prostitution, obstructing prevention or assistance work). Art. 225-7 sets 10 years and €1,500,000 for aggravated procuring, including where it is committed against a minor or a vulnerable person, against several people, with coercion, or (10°) "grâce à l'utilisation, pour la diffusion de messages à destination d'un public non déterminé, d'un réseau de communication électronique". Higher tiers: art. 225-7-1 (minor under 15: 20 years and €3,000,000), art. 225-8 (organised gang), art. 225-9 (torture or acts of barbarity: life). Income received from people who habitually engage in prostitution is also taxable (see tax).

Because prostitution requires physical contact under case law, the Cour de cassation held on 18 May 2022 (n° 21-82.283) that operators of paid live-webcam ('caming') sites cannot be prosecuted for procuring. Judges, it said, cannot widen the definition beyond what the legislature has provided.

The 2019 inter-inspectorate evaluation noted that the electronic-network aggravation does not cover private social-media channels. Convictions for aggravated procuring rose from 443 in 2017 to 755 in 2024 (provisional), while those for simple procuring stayed between 72 and 102 a year.

The procuring offences in art. 225-5 to 225-12 Code pénal contain no stand-alone advertising offence. Third-party advertising is instead reached through art. 225-5 1° (aiding, assisting or protecting another's prostitution), art. 225-5 2° (profiting from it) and the aggravating circumstance in art. 225-7 10° (use of an electronic communications network to send messages to an undetermined public).

Example: the national observatory on violence against women reports a judgment of the Bobigny criminal court of 8 December 2025. A man convicted of aggravated procuring of two minors had, among other acts, provided flats, created and posted prostitution ads on Sexmodel, supplied SIM cards and organised transport.

Hosting duties. Art. 1 of loi n° 2016-444 added the procuring offences (art. 225-5 and 225-6 Code pénal) to the list of content that hosting providers must help combat under art. 6 of the LCEN (loi n° 2004-575). In the current version (part IV.A, in force since 26 August 2026), hosting providers must "informer promptement les autorités compétentes" of such illegal activities reported to them; failure is punishable by one year's imprisonment and €250,000. Part IV.C penalises failure to notify the authorities as required by Article 18 of the Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065). The 2019 evaluation found the reporting mechanisms of little use (178 procuring or trafficking reports to the police platform PHAROS in 2018 out of about 163,000). It also noted that the original bill would have let the administration have procuring sites blocked, which was dropped.

Ad sites. In late May 2018 the Paris prosecutor opened a judicial investigation against persons unknown for aggravated procuring concerning Vivastreet's 'Sans lendemain', 'Erotica' and 'Erotica gay' sections; the site then suspended its dating section. The outcome of that investigation was not found for this profile.

Webcam and remote content. The Cour de cassation held on 18 May 2022 that caming involves no physical contact and so is not prostitution; the sites offering it cannot be prosecuted for procuring. The 'loi intégrale' bill (n° 3106) at committee stage (Art. 25) would have reversed this by making it procuring to help, or act as an intermediary for, remote paid sexual acts, and by fining buyers of such acts. A government amendment adopted in the Assemblée on 7 October 2026 replaced that wording with a new offence of online sexual exploitation, limited to recruitment by coercion or abuse (see pending).

The inter-inspectorate evaluation (IGA, IGAS, IGJ; dated December 2019, published 2020) observed that in some cities it visited the 2016 law had no effect on municipal orders (arrêtés municipaux) regulating the use of the public highway, some of which target prostitution, and considered them contrary to the spirit of the law. It also reported that buyer fines were sometimes used to deal with public-order problems in particular areas, and that the measure had probably contributed to a decline in street prostitution, especially in Paris, and to a shift to less visible indoor and online-arranged work.

The commissions départementales de lutte contre la prostitution, le proxénétisme et la traite des êtres humains aux fins d'exploitation sexuelle (CDLP), created under art. 5 of the 2016 law, give opinions on entry into and renewal of the exit programme; the prefect decides. On 31 December 2025, 921 people were in an exit programme (96% women), and 30 départements had none in progress. In 2025, 14 commissions held no meeting. Since December 2025 the commissions have been renamed (commissions départementales de lutte contre la prostitution, l'exploitation sexuelle et la traite des êtres humains à des fins d'exploitation sexuelle) and include child-protection services, according to the national observatory.

BOFiP BOI-BNC-CHAMP-10-10-20-40 (version of 28 June 2023), § 580, citing CE, 4 May 1979, n° 9337. The same paragraph refers to people retraining through the programme in art. L. 121-9 CASF and to the presumption of gêne et indigence under art. L. 247 1° Livre des procédures fiscales. § 590 states that money received from people who habitually engage in prostitution is taxable for the recipient, who cannot argue that the activity is criminal (CE, 5 November 1980, n° 13222).

The 2019 evaluation describes both residence routes (then art. L. 316-1-1 and L. 316-1 of the CESEDA). According to the national observatory, about 80% of people supported in exit programmes by the Amicale du Nid between 2017 and 2025 came from sub-Saharan Africa. The 2019 evaluation describes street prostitution as almost entirely foreign, mainly Nigerian, Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian, as well as Chinese networks in Paris.