Meloni's School Measures Pass, and the Island Counts Its Classrooms

The Italian government has agreed on measures to ban the burqa and niqab in schools and to limit the number of foreign pupils in each class, the BBC reported on Thursday. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni described the proposals as "common-sense tools that do not divide but really help to integrate", according to the BBC.

The New York Times reported the same cabinet decision, noting that Meloni said the goal was to better integrate children who do not speak Italian, while critics accused her of trying to appease anti-immigrant sentiment. The two foreign accounts agree on what the measures do and disagree, in effect, on what they are for.

The Local Italy, an English-language outlet for foreign residents, asked this week what is really driving the clampdown, placing the announcement in the context of the government's identitarian rhetoric. Le Monde, in a series on the European far right, reported separately that the Lombard city of Monza has been gripped by what it called an atmosphere of uninhibited racism, fuelled in part by the same political current.