As dusk sets over Berlin, scores of scantily clothed women and girls pour out on the Kurfurstenstrasse and nearby streets – the German capital’s most notorious sex trade neighbourhood.

Many of these women, local residents say, come from Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine. Some are obviously underage.

As the night falls, more and more women come out to their working stations, usually dropped off by men in old cars. The women are wary of strangers but several of them can be overheard speaking Romanian.

Most of them did not have the German sex industry on their minds when they imagined bright futures for themselves in the EU, just as Romania did not envisage prostitution becoming one of its leading “exports” after it joined the EU in 2007.

But official statistics from Germany and some other EU member states show that Romanian nationals represent a significant portion of sex workers in these countries.

“When talking about sex trafficking, Romania is seen as one of the trend setters in Europe, next to Albania,” Silvia Martis Tabusca, an international law professor specializing in migration at the Romanian American University, told BIRN.