Women can be sacked by employers for refusing to remove their hijabs, Europe’s highest court has ruled.

EU judges decreed businesses can ban employees from wearing a headscarf if they need to do so to project an image of neutrality to customers.

They were asked to make a judgment on two German cases after female employees – one a cashier and the other a support worker for children with special needs – were threatened with suspension for wearing the hijab.

“A prohibition on wearing any visible form of expression of political, philosophical or religious beliefs in the workplace may be justified by the employer’s need to present a neutral image towards customers or to prevent social disputes,” the EU court said.

Sulaiman Wilms, who works for the EU Muslim Network, said: “This judgment is not just a blow against active, dynamic and working Muslim women, it’s the confirmation of an ongoing European trend to constrain the religious expression of their faith and spiritual life praxis”.

Julie Pascoet, the European Anti-Racism Network’s senior advocacy officer, said: “The Court of Justice of the EU continues to fail to protect Muslim women from structural and intersectional forms of discrimination.

“Again, the court doesn’t take into account the disproportionate impact that companies’ policies prohibiting religious signs have on Muslim women as a result of racial and sexist prejudices against them.”

The ruling gives national courts in all of the EU’s 27 member states the legal power to rule similarly in cases of employers demanding women remove their headscarves. It is a reaffirmation of a judgment delivered by judges in a 2017 case regarding the wearing of religious symbols in the workplace.

The two cases brought before the court this time related to women who had started wearing the hijab after they had returned to work following parental leave. Neither woman was wearing one when she was hired.

Hijab bans have been a contentious issue in Germany for years while French debates about the hijab started in 2004, when a judge ruled that a similar need for “neutrality” was a justifiable reason for sacking a creche worker. (© Telegraph Media Group Ltd 2021)