French lawmakers have voted in favour of a law that makes it illegal to pay for sex and imposes fines of up to $4,270 on the clients of prostitutes. Under the new law, clients caught paying prostitutes for sex will be fined $1,706. The bill will also overturn a 2003 law that made it illegal for prostitutes to solicit for sex.

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All European countries penalise pimping, but France will become only the fifth to punish the clients of prostitutes, along with Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Britain. Sweden in 1999 became the first country in the world to make it illegal to pay for sex, in a bid to lower demand. There are an estimated 40,000 sex workers in France, some 80 to 90 percent of whom are believed to be foreign. Many are victims of trafficking. The bill calls for measures -- backed by an annual budget of $5.4 million -- to help prostitutes find other jobs and a six-month residency permit for foreign sex workers.

Critics have pointed to the difficulty of proving payment for sex, since the money usually changes hands in private. Also, those who buy sex over the Internet are unlikely to be caught by the new law, experts say.  It is also very difficult to track social network sites such as dating websites, which are one of the main ways to connect prostitutes and clients.

The kinds of algorithms used to block child pornography and jihadist recruitment cannot be used to combat prostitution online because the "risk of error" is too great, lead experts in the field said.

TagsFrance, Prostitutes, SEX