Italy passes decree capping foreign students and banning face veils
- Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has passed a decree implementing a 30% cap on foreign students in classrooms who do not adequately know Italian, alongside a ban...
- The newly approved decree sets out that starting in the 2027–28 school year, classrooms will limit students lacking adequate Italian language proficiency to 30%.
- Rights campaigners and political analysts attribute the sudden policy push to electoral vulnerability.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has passed a decree implementing a 30% cap on foreign students in classrooms who do not adequately know Italian, alongside a ban on full-face veils like the burqa and niqab in schools. Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, described the policies as commonsense measures that aid integration rather than divide. Critics, however, argue the government is running scared ahead of next year’s general election amid mounting pressure from an emerging faction on the right.
Classroom Limits and Integration Rules
The newly approved decree sets out that starting in the 2027–28 school year, classrooms will limit students lacking adequate Italian language proficiency to 30%. Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara stated that the restrictions will impact roughly 1,000 classrooms, representing about 0.3% of the total nationwide. Under the provisions, if students show persistent integration or language struggles, their parents will be referred to social services. Those parents will be required to attend free literacy and Italian language classes, facing fines of up to €1,000 for non-compliance. Students born and raised in Italy, or those who have attended at least two years of nursery school or completed three years of schooling in the country, are exempt from these caps.
Political Pressures and Right-Wing Challengers
Rights campaigners and political analysts attribute the sudden policy push to electoral vulnerability. Daniela Ionita of the campaign group Italians Without Citizenship argued that the administration is manufacturing an emergency. She noted that an estimated 60% of pupils categorized as foreign were actually born in Italy but face significant obstacles in acquiring citizenship. Marco Tarchi, a political scientist at the University of Florence, stated that the measures are driven by fear of a fresh political challenge on the extreme right. Since February, a new party named Futuro Nazionale, led by former army general Roberto Vannacci, has gained momentum in polls. The party’s platform features positions on remigration, limits on foreigners, and curbs on LGBTQ+ rights and abortion. Polls suggest the new faction could capture about 8% of the vote in the expected spring 2027 general election, outpacing Brothers of Italy’s coalition partners, the League and Forza Italia.
Many of the FN’s potential voters are former supporters of Giorgia Meloni’s party who are disappointed that, once in power, the leader softened many of her previous stances regarding the European Union… and immigration.
Marco Tarchi Tarchi added that Meloni may feel compelled to adopt harsher stances closer to her previous opposition rhetoric to reclaim support from voters defecting to Futuro Nazionale.