Studying Silences in EU Decision-Making: The Silence Around Prostitution

The EU has expanded its policy remit into all kinds of areas, and has made a clear commitment to gender equality. However, issues such as prostitution, abortion and same-sex families, which many would argue are closely linked to gender equality, have remained absent from the EU policy agenda. This paper takes the case of prostitution, and asks how we explain the EU’s policy silence on this issue, despite its clear action on the closely related issue of trafficking in human beings (the 2011 Anti-Trafficking Directive; the appointment of an Anti-Trafficking Coordinator; and the Strategy towards the Eradication of Trafficking in Human Beings (2012-2016)). Using a combination of process tracing, document analysis, and interviews with key actors, it examines how prostitution and trafficking have been placed on/kept off the policy agenda; how they have been framed as policy issues; which actors have been able to define the issues, and which have been excluded. The paper contributes to a broader understanding of why some issues become defined as problems requiring public policy responses and others do not; how they appear on, or are excluded from, the policy agenda at the member state and EU level; and who has the power to define them.