Sweden Democrat MEP Launches Hijab Ban Petition Targeting EU Parliament Staff

An EU law­mak­er is cam­paign­ing to ban the use of the hijab and oth­er Islam­ic head­scarves by peo­ple who work for the leg­is­la­ture, accord­ing to an email cir­cu­lat­ed among all mem­bers of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment on Tues­day. Char­lie Weimers, head of the Swe­den Democ­rats del­e­ga­tion with­in the Euro­pean Con­ser­v­a­tives and Reformists group, asked his col­leagues to sign a peti­tion to ban wear­ing “the hijab, niqab, or oth­er Islam­ic head­scarves by civ­il ser­vants employed by EU insti­tu­tions, as well as by exter­nal ser­vice providers con­tract­ed to work on EU premis­es.” Once the sig­na­tures are gath­ered he will send the request to Euro­pean Par­lia­ment Pres­i­dent Rober­ta Met­so­la by the end of the day on Fri­day, Oct. 3, accord­ing to the email. “The hijab ban would rein­force the impar­tial­i­ty, equal­i­ty and uni­ver­sal­i­ty of pub­lic ser­vice with­in the Union, send a strong sig­nal of sup­port to empow­er all females cur­rent­ly liv­ing under Islam­ic oppres­sion and ensure that the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment serves as a neu­tral exam­ple for mem­ber states, civ­il soci­ety and oth­er inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions,” reads the let­ter, obtained by POLITICO.

Read more: https://www.politico.eu/article/conservative-mep-europe-parliament-headscarves-islam-sweden-ban/

Key Points

• Char­lie Weimers plans to send the peti­tion to Euro­pean Par­lia­ment Pres­i­dent Rober­ta Met­so­la by the end of the day on Fri­day, Octo­ber 3, after gath­er­ing sig­na­tures from fel­low MEPs.
• The let­ter obtained by Politi­co claims that gar­ments cov­er­ing the head and neck com­pli­cate secu­ri­ty screen­ing and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, adding oper­a­tional risks that are absent when small­er reli­gious sym­bols are worn discreetly.
• Mar­tin Schird­e­wan, co-chair of The Left, called the pro­pos­al noth­ing more than an Islam­o­pho­bic dis­trac­tion from real chal­lenges fac­ing Euro­peans, such as ris­ing inequal­i­ty and cli­mate breakdown.
• MEP Hana Jal­loul Muro said she was shocked by the pro­pos­al, crit­i­ciz­ing the let­ter for attack­ing women work­ers and describ­ing it as filled with hatred, sex­ism, and Islam­o­pho­bia that assaults free­dom of religion.

Sweden Democrats and the Global National Conservative Alliance: From Neo-Nazi Origins to International Far-Right Network

The Swe­den Democ­rats oper­ate with­in the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance, unit­ing right-wing and far-right move­ments world­wide under shared prin­ci­ples of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and oppo­si­tion to glob­al insti­tu­tions. Mat­tias Karls­son, a mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and Swe­den Democ­rats leader, appeared as a con­firmed speak­er at the Feb­ru­ary 2020 Nation­al Con­ser­vatism con­fer­ence in Rome, shar­ing the plat­form with promi­nent Euro­pean nation­al­ist fig­ures includ­ing Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán, Mar­i­on Maréchal of France’s Nation­al Front, and Gior­gia Mel­oni of Italy’s Broth­ers of Italy par­ty. Sim­i­lar­ly, Char­lie Weimers, a Mem­ber of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment from the Swe­den Democ­rats, was invit­ed to a con­tro­ver­sial March 2025 Israeli gov­ern­ment anti­semitism con­fer­ence along­side oth­er far-right Euro­pean fig­ures, prompt­ing boy­cotts from French philoso­pher Bernard-Hen­ri Levy and Ger­man offi­cials con­cerned about nor­mal­iz­ing par­ties with his­tor­i­cal ties to antisemitism.

The Swe­den Democ­rats’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in this alliance aligns with their trans­for­ma­tion from a par­ty with neo-Nazi origins—founded in 1988 by fig­ures includ­ing SS-Rot­ten­führer Gustaf Ekström—into what they now present as a main­stream nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment. Beyond inter­na­tion­al net­work­ing, the par­ty has imple­ment­ed dis­tinct­ly nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive cli­mate poli­cies, scrap­ping Swe­den’s 2030 inter­im emis­sion tar­gets while bet­ting on nuclear pow­er and forests, cut­ting flight tax­es despite emis­sions increas­es, and slash­ing the off­shore wind pipeline by 90 per­cent. This approach exem­pli­fies how GNCA par­ties reframe cli­mate action as threats to nation­al sov­er­eign­ty and iden­ti­ty, treat­ing EU Green Deal tar­gets as out­side impo­si­tions rather than shared oblig­a­tions. The Swe­den Democ­rats joined the Euro­pean Con­ser­v­a­tives and Reformists group in 2018, dis­tanc­ing them­selves from more overt­ly pro-Russ­ian par­ties while main­tain­ing coop­er­a­tion with the Dan­ish Peo­ple’s Par­ty and Fin­land’s Finns Par­ty through the 2024 for­ma­tion of the “Nordic Free­dom” alliance with­in the Euro­pean Parliament.

Exter­nal References:
• Swe­den Democ­rats — Wikipedia
• Swedish Elec­tions and the Main­stream­ing of the Far Right — Green Euro­pean Journal
• The Swe­den Democ­rats: Killer of Swedish Excep­tion­al­ism — Euro­pean Cen­ter for Pop­ulism Studies

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