Companies should be free to ban Muslim women from wearing headscarves at work if they have a general policy barring all religious and political symbols, a senior EU lawyer has said.
A headscarf should be seen no differently to a Jewish kippa, a Sikh turban or a Christian wearing a prominent crucifix or a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Jesus is great”, said Juliane Kokott, an advocate general at the European court of justice.
Companies should be entitled to prevent staff from wearing any garments making a religious, political or philosophical statement, she said, in the run-up to a landmark ruling expected from the EU’s highest court this year.
The advocate general’s opinion is not binding, but the court’s judges often follow such pronouncements in their final ruling.
The case concerned was heard by the court after a complaint from a Muslim woman in Belgium who was fired for wearing a headscarf.
Samira Achbita had been a receptionist for the Belgian branch of G4S, the London-listed outsourcing and security company. After working there for three years, she decided she wanted to start wearing a headscarf at work for religious reasons. She already wore a headscarf outside working hours.
But G4S Belgium said a headscarf contravened company policy, at that time an unwritten rule. Achibita was fired in June 2006 for refusing to take off the scarf.
The day after her dismissal G4S Belgium updated its code of conduct to ban “any visible signs of their political, philosophical or religious beliefs”.
Achbita, supported by an NGO, the Interfederal Centre for Equal Opportunities, launched a case for wrongful dismissal in the Belgian courts. A lower court and appeal court dismissed her claim, but her case was passed to the ECJ in Luxembourg, which has the final say over the interpretation of the EU’s anti-discrimination directive.
Giving her opinion, Kokott said the G4S ban was an appropriate and proportional policy in line with the company’s objectives of religious and ideological neutrality.
“While an employee cannot ‘leave’ his sex, skin colour, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or disability ‘at the door’ upon entering his employer’s premises, he may be expected to moderate the exercise of his religion in the workplace,” she wrote.
The ECJ’s final ruling, expected within three to six months, will be a landmark decision, marking the first time the EU court has waded into the controversial issue of head coverings worn by Muslims.
But religious symbols have come to the attention of other European courts. The European court of human rights, which is not part of the EU, ruled in 2013 that a British Airways check-in worker’s rights to express her religion had been unfairly restricted when she was prevented from wearing a cross at work.
The wearing of headscarves has long been a thorny issue in France and Belgium. In 2004 France banned pupils in state schools from wearing headscarves, crosses and turbans. France was also the first European country to outlaw the full face veil: then president Nicolas Sarkozy banned the niqab from public places in 2011. A similar ban on the full face veil came into effect a few months later in Belgium.
Sara Benedi-Lahuerta, a lecturer in employment law at Southampton University, said it was significant that the ECJ advocate general had not singled out religion, but also referred to political symbols in her assessment of whether garments conflicted with anti-discrimination law.
“The argument of the advocate general would seem to support nuetrality policies when they are well-drafted, if they are drafted in a sufficiently broad way,” she said. “This is an interesting opinion, but it is at the moment just an opinion and we need to see if the court follows it or not.”
A spokesman for the Interfederal Centre for Equal Opportunities said they would await the ECJ’s final ruling before commenting. A spokesman for G4S in the UK, where the company has its global headquarters, said: “We work hard to create an inclusive environment for our employees in all countries where we operate. The recent opinion issued by the advocate-general in a case in Belgium will not affect our UK business.”