Amsterdam city council decided today to withdraw permits for many prostitution businesses operating in its infamous red light district as part of a crime crackdown.
The red-lit windows where near-naked women offer their services will have to close, as a consequence of the decision.
The city said in a statement it had turned down 33 applications from sex companies after a new screening process.
"Amsterdam wants to reduce the influence of criminality in the city and the red light district," it said, adding it planned to complete its review of the sector by the end of 2007.
Dutch news agency ANP said the permits would affect 108 - or about one in five - of Amsterdam's sex businesses.
Harrowing reports of forced prostitution and human trafficking caused a public outcry earlier this year and even prompted calls from councillors for the 800-year-old district to be shut down completely.
Many sex workers reacted furiously. Prostitution has been fully legal in the Netherlands since 2000, and sex workers are self-employed and subject to tax.
However, one rights group estimates that around 3,500 women are trafficked to the Netherlands each year from eastern Europe and Asia to work in secret brothels or illegal escort agencies, where they are often held captive and abused.
Tourist authorities admit the district - a clutch of narrow alleys and canals lined with sex shops, brothels and neon signs - is as big an attraction as Amsterdam's museums and coffee shops, where marijuana is freely smoked and sold.
Charles Geerts, who runs many of Amsterdam's prostitution businesses, told ANP he hoped courts would reverse the decision, which he said would force him to close 60 windows and put about 100 prostitutes out of work.
"I have a clean record ... I have never been suspected, prosecuted or convicted of a single crime," he said.
Metje Blaak, from the Red Thread prostitutes rights group, said she was worried that Amsterdam might go the way of the eastern city of Arnhem which has shut its red light district.
"The city council can say that tourists come for the pretty Amsterdam houses, but nowhere in the world is there a red light district like this. It is unique," she told ANP.
Mariska Majoor, a former prostitute who runs an information centre on the district, said the move would not help tackle problems like forced prostitution. "The windows that have to close are well-run ones," she said.