Meloni Pledges Ban on Veils in Italian Schools and Limits on Foreign Students

Italy's prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said on Sunday that she would move to ban burqas and niqabs in Italian schools and to limit the number of foreign students in classrooms, according to Al Jazeera and Politico Europe. "Italian children cannot feel like a minority in the classroom," she said, in the wording carried by Politico Europe.

Al Jazeera reported that Meloni leads "Italy's longest serving government since WW2" and faces an election threat from a far-right rival party. The two outlets frame the announcement as a domestic political move as much as a policy one.

The pledge touches two sensitive areas at once: the place of religious dress in public institutions, and the composition of a school population in a country of roughly 59 million that the world press routinely describes as ageing and dependent on immigration to fill its workforce.