Last January, for the first time, Spain included prostitution in the CNAE, the national classification of economic activities – an official system for statistical and administrative purposes. , “other personal services”, since then “the provision or agreement of sexual services” appears. It went unnoticed and: Spain has never been closer to legislating the abolition of prostitution than now because it will be this September to the Council of Ministers. It is, from a political, contradictory prism. This Monday, the Ministry of Equality has sent a statement on this inclusion in the CNAE in which it ensures that “the Government works with the INE for the exclusion of the mention of the sexual services of the interpretive guide of the National Classification of Economic Activities (CNAE).”
The Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, has affirmed that the “mention [en el CNAE] It is an automatism that comes from European practice ”and that they are“ working in their exclusion ”together with the Ministry of Economy and the INE since, as explained in the statement, the introduction has resulted from a direct translation from Eurostat:“ The guide published by the National Institute of Statistics is limited to literally translating the original interpretive guide published by Eurostat. This guide accompanies the basic document that classifies the economic activities of all Member States. ”
From the Ministry they add that they will send “a letter to the European Equality Commissioner to request the adaptation of that list of economic activities to the legal system of each country”, since “being the basis of a European harmonization, it does not attend to the legal and social differences between the Member States. In this context, the Government is working with the INE for a better adaptation of the guide to the Spanish reality”.
The Spanish reality, at this time, is that of a government whose objective is the abolition – according to different occasions in recent months -, with a text that will foreseeably be for a first round in the Council of Ministers in a few weeks ,. But even without that parliamentary agreement, and although it will be more than complicated to reach it, the contradiction between giving a certain letter of nature to prostitution is obvious giving it an economic category and the intention of abolishing it.
Equality has insisted that this nomenclature “has no legal efficacy”-because “is not contemplated in Royal Decree 10/2025, of January 14, which approves the National Classification of Economic Activities 2025 (CNAE-2025)”-; And also in the “coherence” of the government, “that continues to work in the draft of an abolitionist law of prostitution.”
