YNOT EUROPE – Despite the government’s assertion “the world’s oldest profession” is inextricably linked with organized crime and rampant corruption, half of all Bulgarians think prostitution should be legalized, according to a recent poll by the Risk Monitor Foundation. The foundation is a non-governmental entity dedicated to studying and addressing human trafficking.

Forty-seven percent of Bulgarians polled said legalization would remove the criminal element from prostitution and allow sex workers to earn a living wage. At the same time, 56 percent of Bulgarians believe prostitution is immoral and 53 percent view sex work as a violation of human rights. Only 23 percent of poll respondents called prostitution a profession similar to any other employment.

Twenty-seven percent said they think prostitutes’ customers should be prosecuted even if the women involved are of legal age and make the career decision without interference.

According to the poll, which the foundation presented during a roundtable discussion about human trafficking on Tuesday, prostitution is a booming tourist industry in Bulgaria. Half of tourists visiting the country admit they have been approached by a prostitute, either on the street or in a club.

One-third of the foreign visitors to the Black Sea Coast said they paid or were asked to pay 50 to 99 euros for sex. More than 30 percent of the country’s cab drivers said they have paid 60-100 Bulgarian lev for a prostitute’s services. The highest prices the foundation discovered were in upscale massage parlors, clubs and hotels, where services can reach 300 Bulgarian lev per hour if a woman is self-employed; 600 per hour to 1,000 per night if a pimp or the establishment takes a cut (usually 50 percent).

Even at those prices, the average prostitute makes only 2,000-5,000 Bulgarian lev monthly, leading 41 percent of poll respondents to conclude poverty is the major contributing factor to a woman’s decision to work as a prostitute.

The majority of prostitutes working in Bulgaria (76 percent) are Roma (an ethnic group sometimes called “gypsies”). Only 11 percent of all prostitutes in the country said they were not Bulgarian.

The report also indicated Bulgaria exports a significant number of sex workers to other European countries, the U.S. and South Africa. In Belgium, 70 percent of the prostitutes are Bulgarian, according to the Risk Monitor Foundation report. The foundation blames the exportation of sex workers on organized crime, which it says takes in as much as 1 billion euros annually from the sex trade.

State officials are even more forceful in their evaluation of what the Bulgarian government considers a major problem.

“Paid sex is connected to organized crime,” Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said during Tuesday’s discussion, which was co-hosted by the National Commission for Prevention of Human Trafficking. “It is a very lucrative business, and Bulgaria ranks third in the trafficking of women in Europe after Romania and the Ukraine.”