The country where the regulation of prostitution was invented, France became abolitionist in 1960. Since then, prostitutes are considered as socially maladjusted persons who need social work assistance, whereas any form of facilitation, organisation and exploitation of their activities are coerced as procuring. Legal innovation happened in 2003, first with the introduction of the specific crime of "trafficking in human beings", second with a harsher coercion of public solicitation. This criminalisation process goes along with a dominant framing of (foreign) prostitutes as victims of trafficking networks, and recently culminated with the adoption a law proposal that criminalises clients.