Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said her government will introduce legislation to limit the number of foreign students in classrooms and ban full-face coverings in schools.
Appearing on Sunday at the Fenix, the annual national youth festival organised by Gioventù Nazionale, the youth wing of her Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, told her student supporters that Italian children should not become a minority in their own classrooms.
“It’s unthinkable that in an Italian classroom, Italian children feel cornered because they’ve become the minority. It can’t be done,” she said, according to Corriere della Sera.
The Italian premier said her Council of Ministers would therefore “soon introduce a law on the maximum number of foreign students in classes.”
Meloni said that this would be paired with a “requirement” for parents of foreign students struggling to integrate to learn Italian. The legislation would additionally impose a ban on burqas and niqabs in schools, she declared, saying that it is a “question of civilisation”.
“We go to school with our faces uncovered, and in Italy, no one, in the name of a real or presumed tradition, can decide that a young woman must hide. Gender equality is non-negotiable,” she added.
Meloni, who recently earned the distinction of having the longest-serving government in post-war Italy, appears intent on shoring up her position on immigration prior to next year’s elections.
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