Thanks to new powers given to Italian mayors, the cities of Padua and Verona have brought in fines for clients who use street prostitutes. According to a government spokesman, the measures were introduced to improve the image of cities and to combat organised prostitution. ''The security decree allows mayors to apply a range of fines from 50 to 500 euros, depending on the gravity of the behaviour of the person committing the crime,'' explained Verona Mayor Flavio Tosi.

''We have decided to apply the maximum sanction of 500 euros for the violation of our anti-prostitution order: a deterrent that's much stronger than the 36 euros for holding up traffic circulation that mayors had to make do with before the security decree,'' Tosi explained.

At the moment 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.

Meanwhile, a survey for the Donna Moderna magazine in the same month showed that 85 per cent of Italians are in favour of reopening brothels. According to a recent study there are some 100,000 prostitutes in Italy, 65 per cent of whom work on the streets and 35 per cent in private residences or clubs. Most prostitutes were said to be foreigners, from some 60 different countries, 20 per cent were minors and 10 per cent were forced into prostitution by criminal gangs. The study also calculated that prostitutes in Italy charged an average of 30 euros per customer and generated a turnover in the neighborhood of some 90 million euros a month. Clients were said to number around nine million with 80 per cent seeking unprotected sex.