Councillors have agreed, the brother windows of Amsterdam’s red light district will be closed and an “erotic centre” will be set up away from the city centre, according to The Guardian.
A proposal from the city’s mayor, Femke Halsema, to shut down a significant number of the windows in the narrow alleys around the docks was backed by a broad group of political parties.
The CDA and ChristenUnie have long lobbied for the closure of the windows, and they have now been backed by the VVD, the party of the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, as well as the Labour party and the Greens.
Halsema had argued that the brothel windows should be closed as women working in the area had become a tourist attraction, attracting gawping and abuse.
When the idea was first proposed, a newly formed lobby group named Red Light United claimed that 90% of the 170 female sex workers it had surveyed wanted to work in the windows in the narrow alleys and canalside streets of the Singel and De Wallen.
However, the majority of councillors agreed that the relocation was necessary to change the type of tourists being attracted to Amsterdam.
Image source: CNN
