What can explain a Member of the European Parliament’s aye or nay to an EU abolitionist approach. Voting behavior in the European Parliament on the issue of prostitution

Sammanfattning: Members of the European Parliament cast votes on a great range of issues. The approach to prostitution on the European Union level is a sensitive and dividing issue, with two main approaches: the abolitionist approach and the sex work approach. Policies on this moral issue is expected to create untraditional lines of conflict. The aim of this study is to see what can explain whether a member of the European Parliament votes for policies on prostitution with an abolitionist approach, and whether there are other significant factors than those primarily highlighted in literature on general voting behavior. With the use of previous research on voting behavior in general and literature on prostitution, possible factors are identified. These factors relate to euroscepticism, gender, gender equality, national legislation, national parties and European party groups. Studying three roll call votes with an abolitionist dynamic, carried out between 2014-2021, the effects of the independent variables are studied with a binary logistic regression analysis. The findings are partly consistent with previous literature. When controlling for European party group cohesion, gender is not able to explain the voting behavior while the view of EU competence, related to national affiliation and national party affiliation, is. National legislation and attitude towards gender equality show disparate results.