By Aaron Gray-Block and Marcel Michelson
“AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Two center-right parties agreed on Thursday to ban the burqa in the Netherlands as the price for parliamentary support from the anti-Islam Freedom party for their planned minority government.
The Netherlands would become the second European Union country to ban the burqa after France.
The draft agreement tightens the rules on immigration and boosts the number of police officers in a concession to far-right Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders.
“We want to stop the Islamisation (of the Netherlands),” Wilders told a news conference, adding that the measures would cut non-Western immigration by half.
Under the proposals, the country would be able to bar entry to radical religious leaders, while convicted immigrants will be expelled more rapidly and immigrants will lose their temporary residence permit if they fail an integration exam.”