NL and SE(?) did this but are slowly rolling it back to varying extents as what happened is free market forces kicked in, and more expensive European women were increasingly ousted by those brought in by gangs from the former Soviet Union and these gangs increasingly managed to infiltrate the “legal/tolerated” scenes.

Swedens current laws make it illegal to buy sexual services but not to sell them which seems strange but it also a way of demand reduction as well as harm reduction to the prostitutes.

The Dutch are certainly downsizing some aspects of their red light district as well as tolerance of drugs, although in reality what they are doing is removing interpreter/translation services for foreigners so those what want to be involved in these controversial trades have to learn Dutch (en nee, dat is toch niet waarom ik probeer Nederlands te leren!)

I agree a tolerant approach can work but only when those what don’t agree with the activities are willing to pay the taxes for stuff like health checks, licensing etc – the problem here is the costs of these are easily quantifiable in countries in North Europe with open and transparent governments (and thus make easy headlines for right-wing newspapers) whereas the avoided cost of crime is not as easily quantifiable, so in harder economic times people become hard hearted… also it might seem odd but because of long standing cultural ties, the right wing of Northern European nations look admiringly at how the stubborn East Anglians did not “cave into the forces of the permissive society”…