Italy on Thursday acted to ban street prostitution in a move the government described as an ''extremely hard blow'' to the industry.
The bill launched by the cabinet also covers prostitution in parks and open countryside.
It hits both sex workers and clients with fines ranging from 200 to 3,000 euros and jail terms of between five and 15 days.
Clients who have sex with minors face harsher fines of between 1,500 and 6,000 euros and jail terms ranging from six months to four years.
In a bid to target prostitution rackets, pimps exploiting teenage prostitutes are punished with terms of six to 12 years and fines ranging from 15,000 to 150,000 euros.
Prostitutes who are forced onto the streets by rackets using violence and threats will not be punishable under the bill.
The bill also foresees the ''assisted repatriation'' of foreign minors caught working as prostitutes who do not have other family members in Italy.
''As a woman involved in politics and in institutions, prostitution makes me shudder,'' said Equal Opportunities Minister Mara Carfagna, who drew up the bill.
''It horrifies me, I don't understand people who sell their own bodies. But I realise that the phenomenon exists and that unfortunately - like drugs - it can't be overcome, but it can be fought,'' Carfagna said.
But Catholic charity Caritas slammed the bill as ''ineffective and counterproductive'' in targeting prostitution as a whole.
''Prostitution will simply move to places that are less accessible to the police and to social workers,'' said Caritas immigration chief Oliviero Forti.
Prostitutes' Rights Committee spokesperson Carla Corso also criticised the bill, which she said would make sex workers ''more invisible and at the mercy of traffickers''.
''The traffickers will take the women off the streets but they will set them to work in apartments, buying up old buildings in the suburbs, and they will do so with the government's good wishes,'' she said.
''This bill gives traffickers a licence to exploit women - it's like reopening the brothels but without any regulation.
''It gives no rights to the women, it doesn't give them tools for emancipation, and above all it doesn't make prostitution a job,'' she added.
Corso also hit out at Equal Opportunities Minister Mara Carfagna for saying she ''did not understand'' women who sold their bodies, claiming the minister - a former model and showgirl - had ''used her body to get where she is today'' and that it was ''enough to open the internet to see her 'charms'''.
Prison rights association Antigone said jail terms proposed in the bill for both prostitutes and clients would cause problems for Italy's already overcrowded prisons.
''It could mean putting hundreds of thousands of people in cells - where are they going to find the space?'' said Antigone President Patrizio Gonnella.
The Save The Children charity meanwhile expressed concerns over a measure in the bill that foresees ''assisted repatriation'' for foreign minors caught working as prostitutes who do not have any family members in Italy.
''These special 'accelerated and simplified' measures for the assisted repatriation of minors is very worrying and appear to clash with the Italian state's duty to safeguard and promote the rights of minors,'' it said.
The charity, which has written to Premier Silvio Berlusconi of its concerns, stressed that repatriation should only occur ''if it is in the best interest of the minor''.
Opposition Democratic Party MP and member of the House's social affairs committee Margherita Miotto accused Carfagna of ''reducing exploited minors to parcels to be sent back to their countries of origin without a shred of intervention by social services in the first instance''.
Under the bill, minors will only be repatriated if they can be assured safe welcome in their own countries.
NINE MILLION PUNTERS IN ITALY.
According to a recent study there are some 100,000 prostitutes in Italy, 65% of whom work on the streets and 35% in private residences or clubs.
Most prostitutes were said to be foreigners, from some 60 different countries, 20% were minors and 10% were forced into prostitution by criminal gangs.
The study also calculated that prostitutes in Italy charge an average of 30 euros per customer and generate a turnover in the neighbourhood of some 90 million euros a month.
Clients were said to number around nine million with 80% seeking unprotected sex.
In a bid to clean up their image and strike out at rackets that force women out on the streets a number of Italian cities, including Padua and Verona, have recently boosted fines for clients.
Both cities have brought in fines of 500 euros for clients caught with streetwalkers thanks to greater powers given to city mayors by the emergency security decree.
Only the exploitation of prostitution - pimping - is illegal in Italy, but city mayors combat the phenomenon through the use of fines, often via road traffic or public decency laws.
