ABSTRACT: During the last decade several Italian local government bodies (and especially Municipalities) attempted to introduce a general ban on the so called "face veil" (niqab or burqa) through secondary law, in the absence of a national comprehensive policy on the matter. The aforementioned attempts were, without fail, found illegal by the Council of State and the Constitutional Court. Nonetheless, following the rekindling of the anti-Islamic sentiment in Europe in the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, we are currently witnessing a "new wave" of local regulation trying to impose a ban on the face veil, based on the claim that, in order to answer the exacerbation of the so called "clash of cultures", a different balancing of the fundamental rights involved is needed. The author challenges the legality of the new local bans, as well as the compatibility of a general ban on the face veil with the Italian constitutional system.
