Why Sarko's Just a Big Girl's Blouse

Across the street from our flat is a small shop window. On display are a dusty selection of oriental curios - model rickshaws, china elephants, bamboo fans, a drooping bunch of silk orchids - discreetly lit in red and purple. Behind them is a net curtain, permanently drawn. On the door it says: Body Relax Institute.

A hundred metres up the street is another, this one called Thai Feelings. The same eastern dolls, lacquered teacups and carved wooden water-buffalos, the same net curtain, the same regular flow of men glancing quickly up and down the street before ringing the doorbell and ducking inside.

In the streets up towards the distinctly seedy Place de Clichy, there are of course many more. One feels the need to proclaim the special proficiency of its proprietor: Graduate of the Corporeal Relaxation and Physical Stress Relief Department of the University of Bangkok.

Now I can't say I have visited any of these places, but our friend Sylvie, who is good mates with the lady from Thai Feelings (they share the same childminder), says there's no doubt, they are what you think they are.

I mention all this because although these places come and go, change names, close and reopen under new management, they're a constant - if not growing - feature of our part of the 9th arrondissement. They're discreet, and they rarely bother anyone (except when more than two or three open in the same street, at which point there's a petition, a piece in Le Parisien, and - within weeks - a notice from the quaintly named Brigade des Moeurs, or Morals Squad, taped to the closed door.)

So when our interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, said last week prostitution in Paris had fallen by 40% thanks to his recent crusade (which included making it an offence to stand on a street corner in a low-cut blouse), it seemed a tad optimistic. It takes more than one unusually hyperactive minister to cut part of the capital's very fabric.

As recently as half a century ago, there were more than 180 maisons closes (brothels) in Paris, employing women registered with the police and who underwent medical check-ups. Toulouse Lautrec painted them, Gustave Flaubert wrote about them, and Guy de Maupassant died of them (syphilis).

Just how deeply prostitution is ingrained in French culture is plain from the number of words to describe its practitioners: chandelle (those who wait under a lamp-post), marcheuse (walks the street), entraineuse (works a bar), caravelle (at the airport), the michetonneuse (cafe terrace) and that relative newcomer, la call-girl.

So what was Sarko on about? True, there's been a purge: 1,726 arrests in Paris for soliciting last year, 274 pimps detained, 569 fines, 126 foreign women sent packing. The minister says a police count shows prostitute numbers in Paris is downfrom 1,700 in 2002 to 1,000.

Rubbish, says the town hall and prostitute groups. "All Sarkozy's activity has just pushed Paris prostitution elsewhere," Marie-Line Champin of the Bus des Femmes, says. "They've moved off the main boulevards and into more secluded spots - the woods, garages, massage parlours. They may be 40% less visible, but there certainly aren't 40% fewer."

A recent study by sociologists, Marie-Elisabeth Handman and Janine Mossuz-Lavau, said women have moved off the main streets into less exposed areas and are working later at night - 3am to 7am - to escape the police and residents' complaints. (Both changes that only increase the risks women face from violent clients.)

In fact, a nose around my neighbourhood would be enough to tell you that the Body Relax Institute, Thai Feelings, Corporeal Stress Reduction Clinic and their kind are doing just as much business as ever, if not more.

"It's logical," says Sylvie the neighbour. "Sarko's done wonders for the rent of small retail premises round here. It'll be like Amsterdam, but behind net curtains."