No abstract

This article explores the discourse on prostitution, trafficking, and buying sex. Buying sex or the purchase of sexual services, as the law says, has been a criminal act in Sweden since 1999. In the summer of 2006 Finland followed the lead, making it a crime to purchase sex from a person who has been subjected to trafficking or procuring. These reforms give a signal that the customers are responsible for increasing the international sex trade, but as the author argues, the commercial language used by the law makers may be a double-edged sword.

The European legal instruments on human trafficking encourage states to tackle the demand for services of trafficked persons, for example, by making the use of services of a trafficked person a criminal offense. In Finland, buying sex from a trafficked person is a criminal offense. This article reports the results of an evaluation of the Finnish law and shows that the implementation has been inefficient. The authors argue that with an amendment of the law, the implementation could be improved but a truly efficient policy would require a total ban of sex purchase along the lines of the Swedish model.

No abstract

subject to a possible extension of a maximum of 1 year for countries encountering particular difficulties in the implementation.The Directive signals a paradigm shift in EU policy on insolvency from the traditional focus on cross-border issues. The new Directive puts insolvency squarely at the heart of internal market regulation, following the EU's policy since the Great Recession of 2008 of promoting and strengthening the economy. Since 2016, the European Commission has issued several documents to facilitate insolvency procedures, leading to the recently adopted Preventive Restructuring Directive. Besides restructuring, the Directive promotes the discharge of pre-insolvency debt for entrepreneurs. The Directive does not require that discharge be extended to other natural persons but recommends it. This article discusses the relationship between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs in an insolvency situation and concludes that a fair interpretation of the new Directive requires that the situation of the ordinary person with liability for business debt be closely scrutinised.