France's Interior Minister Laurent Nunez attends a session of questions to the government at the Sénat in Paris on November 26, 2025. GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP
France's interior minister on Sunday, November 30 said he opposed a proposal put before parliament to ban young girls wearing the Muslim headscarf, saying such a move risked being "stigmatizing" for the minors.
The issue of tightening legal limits on the wearing of the hijab in public is being raised with increasing insistence in France, where the far-right is growing in strength, but which has one of Europe's biggest Muslim communities. Laurent Wauquiez, the head of the parliamentary faction of the traditional right-wing Les Républicains (LR) party, submitted a bill to the Assemblée Nationale last week to ban the wearing of the veil by minors in public.
This proposal "is very stigmatizing towards our Muslim compatriots who may feel hurt," Laurent Nuñez, a former Paris police chief named as interior minister in October to succeed his hardline LR predecessor Bruno Retailleau, told BFMTV. "I am not in favor of it in this way."
A report by the LR in the Sénat has gone even further, suggesting banning Ramadan fasting for those under 16.
