Bathed in purple neon behind her display window, Eva wears a thong, boots laced above the knee and a push-up bra. She stands in a tiny room rented for €100 (£70) a day containing only a basin and a bed, spread with a towel.

“Amsterdam is the best place to work in the world,” the 23-year-old Italian said, looking out on a cobbled street alongside one of the Dutch city’s famous canals. “It is too dangerous working on the streets. Here there are no problems.”

But Amsterdam’s relaxed attitude towards sex and drugs is undergoing a dramatic rethink among senior city officials, who are planning a wholesale “upgrade” of the most open red-light district in Europe over the coming year. The mayor has decided that he is fed up with the area’s seedy reputation and will present a wideranging plan in December to close more than a quarter of the window brothels.

Dozens of the cannabis cafés that draw in thousands of tourists are also to be closed, and the “smart shops” selling harder drugs are likely to be subject to new restrictions.

Prostitutes’ representatives fear that the planned gentrification will force hundreds of women like Eva back on the streets, where, rather than working for themselves, they will have to rely on pimps for their safety and customers.

“We had been very happy that the State was not a moral agent, but this is changing,” said Sietske Altink, of the Red Thread, the prostitutes’ union. “There is a kind of moral offensive going on. They seem a bit fed up with the reputation of Amsterdam as a haven for sex and drugs.”

The union’s immediate cause for concern was the city council’s campaign to make the area more “live-able” by underwriting the €25 million purchase from a notorious local businessman of 18 buildings containing 51 prostitute windows, more than a quarter of the total. Job Cohen, the mayor, said: “The legalisation of prostitution did not bring about what many had hoped. We are still faced with distressing situations in which women are exploited. It is high time for a thorough evaluation of the Prostitution Act [passed in 2000].”

Mr Cohen argues that Amsterdam’s well-meaning tolerance has been exploited by criminals. An experiment in designating a safe zone on the edge of the city for prostitutes to work on the street was wound up in 2003 after it drew in drug dealers, people-traffickers and hordes of prostitutes from across Europe and beyond. Now the council seems to be having the same doubts about the red-light district.

The womens’ groups believe that people-trafficking is just an excuse to give the area a facelift. It was once an exclusive quarter of Amsterdam and still features the most attractive Gothic church in the city, right alongside the Condomerie shop and dozens of women beckoning from their window brothels.

The Prostitution Information Centre blames a backlash against years of Dutch permissiveness. Marisha Majoor, spokeswoman for the centre, said: “I think it is tied up with people’s anxiety about migrants. Everybody wants to do something about human-trafficking but they are choosing the wrong way to handle it. If you want to help women in the sex industry you have to go after pimps. If we lose so many legal and safe working places it will be very dangerous for sex workers.”

The city’s desire to transform the district is not limited to prostitution. After a spate of injuries to tourists jumping from hotel balconies, Mr Cohen wants to force buyers of magic mushrooms to give three days’ notice in person. Gos Kamsma, who manages a back-alley “smart shop” selling a range of hallucinogenic fungi, said that the measure would only increase criminality. “It will affect me for sure because most tourists come on Friday so they won’t be able to buy mushrooms. But the dealers on the street will be the winners. They will sell it straight away.”

Traders and sex workers alike are pleading with city leaders not to destroy its main draw. Ms Altink said: “This is the top tourist attraction and No 2 is the coffee shops, not the Van Gogh Museum. Probably they would prefer a kind of Disneyland where no real girls are working.”

Oldest profession

10m people visit Amsterdam every year. Almost all of them pass through the red light district in the historic city centre
200 windows are used by the area’s prostitutes to advertise themselves to passers-by
25,000 prostitutes work in the Netherlands

Sources: www.rodedraad.nl; www.amsterdam.info; www.dutchamsterdam.nl

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