After a few years of relative silence on sex work legislation in the Hungarian media, the debate regained momentum this summer.
Péter Sárosi, the Drug Policy Director of HCLU challenged the end-demand legislation proposal of MONA (a Hungarian NGO that promotes gender equality and aims to uncover the unfair or inferior treatment of women) and other anti-trafficking organizations. In a newspaper article Sárosi pointed out that even if sex work in Hungary is de jure legal, street sex workers are often harassed by the police, hundreds of them are arrested each month because municipalities reject designating tolerance-zones as the law orders. He called for the inclusion of sex workers into political decision making.