French Senate Bans Burqas

Today the French Senate voted nearly unanimously* to ban the wearing of burqas in public, but the bill must pass constitutional review before it becomes law.

The Senate voted 246 to 1 Tuesday in favor of the bill, which has already passed in the lower chamber, the National Assembly. It will need President Nicolas Sarkozy’s signature. Legislative leaders said they wanted the Constitutional Council to examine it. “This law was the object of long and complex debates,” the Senate president, Gerard Larcher, and National Assembly head Bernard Accoyer said in a joint statement explaining their move. They said in a joint statement that they want to be certain there is “no uncertainty” about it conforming to the constitution.

France’s legislature is the first to vote on such a law, but similar measures are in the works in several other countries in Western Europe.

*Socialist, Communist, and Green party members abstained from the vote, as they did when the measure was presented to the Assembly last month.