The conservative mayor of Villeneuve-Loubet, Lionnel Luca, said “far from calming, this decision can only heighten passions and tensions, with the risk of trouble we wanted to avoid”.
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The ruling was closely watched in France and around the world, after photos of armed police surrounding a Muslim woman as she removed her top on a beach in Nice sparked outrage this week.
In its ruling, the State Council said: “The emotion and the concerns arising from terrorist attacks, especially the attack in Nice on July 14, are not sufficient to legally justify a ban”.
While Valls argued that burkinis oppress women, two ministers in his cabinet, Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem and Health Minister Marisol Touraine, have said banning burkinis is not a good option.
In an interview with Sputnik, French senator Gilbert Roger stressed that the decision applies only to one town and shouldn’t cause any vivid reactions among the public.
Nonsense, says Zanetti, who came up with the original design for the modesty-preserving, full-body swimsuit in 2004.
In a judgment expected to set a precedent, the State Council ruled that local authorities could restrict individual liberties only if wearing the Islamic swimsuit was a “proven risk” to public order.
The issue has created a rift in government.
“These bans do nothing to increase public safety, but do a lot to promote public humiliation”.
But the ruling, which only applied to the ban imposed by Villeneuve-Loubet, was quickly dismissed by several other towns, including Nice, which vowed to keep the restrictions in place and continue imposing fines on women who wear the full-body swimsuit. The newspaper said after four people were injured at a beach in Sisco, riot police were called to stop 200 people marching to a housing complex with a number of residents of North African origin, shouting “this is our home”. He denounced a “rampant Islamization” in the country and said, with Friday’s ruling, “they’ve gained a small additional step”.
The State Council (Conseil d’Etat) was specifically examining laws brought in by the commune of Villeneuve-Loubet but its verdict sets a legal precedent for France.
After a month of intense national scandal and heightened worldwide outrage, France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’Etat, on Friday overturned the burkini ban in a coastal area of the south of France. But de facto the town decrees are hollow because burkini fines can be contested.
Opinions polls suggested most French people backed the bans, which town mayors said were protecting public order and secularism.
“Here the tension is very, very, very strong and I won’t withdraw it”, he told BFMTV.
Meanwhile, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy are supporting the ban.
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The issue has filtered into early campaigning for the presidential election in April 2017, making French cultural identity as well as security a hot issue in political debates. “Not only are they in themselves discriminatory, but as we have seen, the enforcement of these bans leads to abuses and the degrading treatment of Muslim women and girls”, Amnesty International said in a statement.
