BERLIN (Web Desk) – Germany’s interior minister Thomas de Maizière has come out in favour of a partial ban on full face veils, amid a fierce national debate on integration.
“We agree that we reject the burqa, we agree that we want to introduce a legal requirement to show one’s face in places where it is necessary for our society’s coexistence – at the wheel, at public offices, at the registry office, in schools and universities, in the civil service, in court,” he said after a meeting with regional counterparts from his conservative party.
De Maizière told public television that the full face veil “does not belong in our cosmopolitan country”.
He added: “We want to show our faces to each other and that is why we agree that we reject this – the question is how we put this into law.”
De Maizière indicated that outlawing the full face veil only under certain circumstances – as opposed to the blanket ban favoured by the hard right of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Union bloc – would be likely to win approval in parliament.
Merkel’s right-left “grand coalition” holds an overwhelming majority in the Bundestag.
