Month: March 2020

Authored by Mohamed El-Erian, op-ed via Bloomberg,

Look for this week to be full of news about governments and central banks signaling their “whatever it takes” willingness to take additional policy measures to fight the contractionary impact of the coronavirus on virtually every economy around the world. Already, the Federal Reserve signaled on Friday readiness to loosen monetary conditions in the United States while Italy announced on Sunday a “shock therapy” of fiscal measures.

As more announcements materialize during the week, it will be crystal clear that the question will not be about the willingness to act but about the effectiveness of those actions. For the most part, the answer will be only partly satisfactory in the short term until two underlying health conditions change. Less obvious will be the need to weigh immediate benefits — partial and as necessary as they are — against the possibility of longer-term unintended consequences associated with the inevitable use of ill-suited policy tools for the task at hand. Those include more borrowing of growth from the future and even greater reliance on activities bolstered by central bank liquidity injections.

An increasing number of sectors and countries are experiencing sudden-stop dynamics as the economic effects of the coronavirus spread more widely around the world. Both demand and supply are being hit hard and in multiple ways. For example, News Corp., the owner of the Wall Street Journal, banned nonessential travel for its employees this weekend; more conferences are being cancelled around the world; airlines are reducing flights; and companies are asking employees to work from home.

It’s a dynamic that builds on itself in the short term, fueled by a “fear virus” and other behavioral traits that engender paralysis and insecurity. It also promotes self-reinforcing vicious economic cycles with adverse social, political and institutional spillover effects, amplified by the considerable risk of pockets of financial market malfunctioning.

The impact of all this will be a repeat internationally of what I called on Friday the “shock number” out of China: The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index for February not only came in well below expectations — 35.7 compared with the consensus estimate of 45.0 — but was also the worst reading on record. Several countries now face a high likelihood of recession, including Germany, Italy, Japan and Singapore, to name just a few, and some of the more financially stressed ones will experience a rise in credit risk and increasing threats of outright credit rationing.

With that, a growing number of companies will again be forced to revise downward their earnings guidance for the year or withdraw it altogether because of the exceptional uncertainties. Some, with limited cash cushions and maturing debt like their sovereign counterparts, will also have to worry about their refunding prospects, with mounting risk of higher defaults for the most exposed sectors.

In light of all this, it should come as no surprise that a growing number of countries will be announcing emergency stimulus measures. Indeed, those already signaled contain important information:

Friday’s rare four-line statement by the Fed pointed to the “evolving risks” facing the U.S. economy and the central bank’s readiness to deploy “tools and act as appropriate to support the economy.” Just like the Fed’s dramatic 180-degree policy turn a year ago from a multiyear path of raising rates to one of immediate cuts during the year, this opens the door for other central banks to loosen financial conditions. If not coordinated, it will be another year of correlated monetary policy stimulus, in which central bankers respond to the same economic conditions but do not cooperate.

Italy’s announcement highlights not just the more targeted policy focus — tax credits for companies suffering large hits to revenue and additional help to the health sector — but also the willingness of a government to act even in the context of prior fiscal constraints and potential tensions with Brussels.

But the considerable willingness of governments and central banks to act should not be confused with effectiveness.

For the reasons I have detailed before, countering an economic sudden stop, such as the one connected with the coronavirus, is a lot harder in the immediate term than resolving a financial sudden stop. It requires not just well-targeted national and local responses but also internationally coordinated, and not just correlated, efforts. (Think, for example, of the April 2009 G-20 meeting in London.) And, given the use of rapidly designed and poorly suited policy tools, it inevitably involves some collateral damage and unintended consequences, especially for longer-term economic well-being and financial stability.

The best that fiscal and monetary policy interventions can realistically hope for in the next few weeks and months is to:

• Support sectors critical to a holistic recovery, medical services in particular.

• Target the most vulnerable, responsive and highly consequential contracting sectors.

• Provide focused relief to corporate and household balance sheets.

• Bolster emergency assistance to countries overwhelmed by this exogenous and external shock.

• Counter pockets of market malfunctioning through timely direct liquidity injections.

• Provide increasing clarity as to what lies ahead for the global economy, national responses and global policy coordination.

These efforts, however, will not be able to engineer in the short term a generalized global and sustained recovery of the three main drivers of economic activity: consumption, investment and trade.

Consumption will be curtailed by households’ lack of confidence to interact in the economy. Weak demand prospects, as well as disrupted supply chains, will limit corporate investment spending. Trade in goods and services will languish as more countries impose restrictions in their quest to protect the health and safety of their citizens.

To decisively turn the corner, the global economy needs evidence of two health accomplishments:

1. success in containing the spread of the virus, particularly when it comes to community transmission; and

2. sustained success in illness recovery and avoidance, with the latter best done through the availability of a new vaccine.

As for financial markets, look for significant price and liquidity swings as traders navigate the tug-of-war between deepening economic and corporate damage on the one hand and central bank liquidity injections, policy announcements and health news on the other.

The immediate opportunity for investors will differ depending on whether they favor highly tactical drivers (that is, day trading and exploiting arbitrage opportunities because of indiscriminate behavior in markets) or secular and structural ones (those looking for longer-term portfolio positioning that can withstand the considerable volatility ahead).

Fears of a Covid-19 outbreak in Africa have certainly been mounting throughout February, and we noted last week: “It’s Time To Stop Pretending That In All Of Africa There’s Only 3 Covid-19 Cases.” 

The African continent has been plagued with locust swarms and rampant food shortages in the last several months, along with the threat that Chinese workers on Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects could cause an outbreak in Ethiopia or other African countries.

Our suspicions of a virus outbreak in Africa could’ve been confirmed on Friday when Nigerian health authorities declared the first case of Covid-19. Now officials are saying they’ve reached out to nearly one hundred people who had contact with an Italian man who recently became the country’s first case. 

The Federal Ministry of Health has confirmed a coronavirus(Covid-19) case in Lagos State Nigeria. The case which was confirmed on 27/02/2020 is the first case to be reported in Nigeria since the beginning of the outbreak in China in January 2020 @WHO @BBCWorld #CoronaVirusUpdates pic.twitter.com/uF79NYzvAz

— Federal Ministry of Health, NIGERIA (@Fmohnigeria) February 27, 2020

Reuters says the man arrived in Lagos, Nigeria, on February 24 from Milan, Italy, a country that has been hit hard by the virus.

Nigerian authorities have traced the man’s footsteps from the airport to his hotel to the country’s business district and asked everyone who came in contact with him to stay in isolation for 14 days while undergoing regular health inspections from officials.

Lagos State Health Commissioner Akin Abayomi told Reuters, “It is around 100 people, but that number is increasing every minute.” Abayomi said none of the people in isolation in Lagos had exhibited any symptoms yet.

The Italian man is being treated at a hospital in the Lagos district of Yaba. He is a vendor for Lafarge Africa Plc, a cement company located in the southwestern state of Ogun. 

Lafarge Africa Plc stated on Sunday, that all operations were running smoothly, and the 39 people the Italian man came in contact with had been quarantined. 

This is sub-Saharan Africa’s first confirmed case of the virus, with the continent’s third case. Bianco Research’s Jim Bianco said earlier last month that no outbreak had been reported in Africa because of the lack of test kits.

To date no infections on the continent of Africa have been reported. Why?

Only today, February 7, did anyone on the continent actually get a testing kits to look for infected people.

What will this number be in two weeks? https://t.co/4yoWJmNRlc

— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) February 7, 2020

The situation in Africa is rapidly evolving, and events in the last several days could suggest that a further increase in cases will be seen in Nigeria in the days or weeks ahead. This certainly doesn’t bode well for an entire continent that is ill-prepared to handle a major virus outbreak. Africa could be the next region, sort of like what’s happening in Europe at the moment, to get walloped by the virus. 

Authored by Martin Jay via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

I often ask myself how did Boris Johnson become PM of Britain, as I for one, don’t believe it’s entirely to do with Brexit, but more to do with a broader protest vote from a big part of the UK population who voted him in to redress the balance of PC madness which is threatening to destroy the country.

This great democracy, which many look up to as a beacon in the world, has advanced so far down the politically correct road, based on the erroneous assumption that free speech itself should come with caveats which protect those which might be ‘affected’ by it, that white males are losing the right and even the ability to debate.

I generally want to throw something at my 20 year old Samsung plasma (which is about 15cm in width) the moment I hear after a TV show on the BBC the gentle voice which asks “have you been affected by this program?”.

The decline in politics as a subject of common interest, the advancement of ‘comment’ on social media which overshadows raw news reporting and the incomprehensible guilt complex about Britain’s colonial history all combine to feed, if not sustain, a new mantra incubated in Britain’s debating forums: white people should keep quiet and listen to the thumb-sucking liberals and their two-faced moral tutelage, based on simply them being the victim class.

This new space is accommodated by anyone who feels that not being white, male and employed is in itself is a handicap to function in society and therefore, by definition, is entitled to an artificial-assisted narrative which should be given greater prominence – regardless of how ill-informed, biased, idiotic it may be, like only allowing alcoholics an opinion on drinking.

Britain’s multiculturalism is being threatened by these new ‘victims’ and the left wing British media’s obsession to promote their cause at any cost. Even ‘conservatives’ lend them some sympathy as we have got to the stage in Britain where more and more white people feel they don’t have the right to talk about any number of incendiary subjects and so have started to remain mute – which in itself gives further impetus to the loony left who drown in their own excreta of bigotry and hatred of everything which was once considered ‘great’ about Great Britain. The irony of course that often these people have been given prominence in British society by its multiculturalism and its loathing of discrimination, which they would not get in France or Germany. Or in the US for that matter.

This group, which claims to be anti fascist, is actually becoming a movement in itself which aims to achieve everything that Hitler, Mussolini or even Oswald Mosley would hope to achieve. The same group, hilariously, sees the EU as a kind of multicultural organisation which is there as an antithesis to fascism – without even bothering to check how the European Commission in Brussels doesn’t even employ 1% of its staff from brown skinned ranks and that its absolute determination to grab more power from voters is actually fuelling a far-right presence in the European parliament which is breaking all records.

In Britain, this Orwellian madness has reached new levels of absurdity, as an on line army of self-righteous activists have managed to establish a protocol of shaming anyone with an opinion. On anything which doesn’t chime with theirs. And the well organised gang bang on twitter puts the boot in far better than any Kristallnacht

White men are not allowed to talk or write about feminism without a unruly backlash; the same goes for colonial history, slavery and of course Brexit. The bigoted Left have stigmatised the word itself ‘Brexit’ to automatically mean ‘racist, anachronistic, colonial’.

The vortex of banality is the subject of race itself which as we have seen recently with the Laurence Fox debacle, is a subject which the Left have convinced us all that white males are not qualified to talk about – that when they do, we are led to believe that talking about race, is an act of racism itself.

Fox just recently left Twitter following his BBC talk show spat where he was accused to being “racist” for really having the nerve to do something even more horrific than dare to have an opinion on the subject but to actually speak common sense on it. The horror. The horror. How dare a white Englishman say “booh” to the lies being spread by the Left about Meghan being hounded out of Britain because of her skin colour?

We should be worried about Fox stepping away from Twitter?

The race debate has been dominated to such an extent by left wing ‘victims’ that we have reached a point of preposterousness where white people can’t even debate the subject itself.

Yet this absurdity is championed by the Left’s acolytes – often people who are victims of being neither white nor male and who have profiteered by positive discrimination – such as Kuba Shand-Baptiste who recently had a tantrum on twitter with me for simply having the audacity to pitch her an opinion piece on the subject of race.

The black comment editor, it would seem, writes almost entirely about race and racism. And so, naturally, I pitched to her in preference to her colleagues. But within seconds a spasm of misplaced antagonistic replies came before being blocked by the lady who took great acceptation to the idea of a white make journalist writing about racism in Britain.

Yet her anger wasn’t real. It couldn’t be as there was nothing really to get angry about. And herein lies the crux of what is wrong about the Left’s possession of these prickly subjects: their hue and cry is fake and they will go to any lengths to protect their own incomes and raison d’etre which derive from taking control of these subjects.

Shand-Baptiste wasn’t angry with me at all. She faked it so as to justify not replying to my pitch for an article on the subject, which I assume she does on a regular basis.

And who could blame her? After all, what would the Shand-Baptistes do in Britain if white males were able to promote their own ideas about racism in Britain? The answer is they’d be out of a job, even with the vociferous positive discrimination which the Indie (and the Washington Post for that matter) applies on its comment desk. If more celebrities like Laurence Fox were freely able to tweet his views about racism and how the subject has been hijacked by people like Shande-Baptiste then perhaps others would think more about the irony of a black journalist enjoying the privilege of an elitist job in Britain, writing about mainly her cause. Talk about low hanging fruit. And what irony.

She doesn’t like Laurence Fox nor his opinions as she, in her column, associates white males’ opinions to a “sliding bigotry” in a media landscape which she believes has airbrushed out the “marginalised” (black, Asian, Muslim, handicapped, lesbian etc), simply because one popular talk show was recently axed. It escapes her that the popular PC view championed by the Left doesn’t have to be necessarily fronted by black people on TV debates each night. Plenty of white folk carry the ‘victim’ torch on their behalf which is why we are in the position today where someone like Fox has to close his Twitter account. Fox appears to be a proponent of free speech and would probably die for Shande-Baptiste’s right to exercise it. I doubt if this would work the other way around as the black race commentator appears to burst into tears when a white male pitches a piece to her about racism. But her argument is flawed and churlish at best. On the one hand she claims that there is no real representation of ‘marginal’ voices (black) but then admits later in the piece that she has stopped taking the calls from producers to appear on such debates herself. Speaking on behalf of the entire black community in the UK, she gushes “ we either defend our rights and get screamed at, or we “go high” and embrace, sometimes physically, the people who attack us. No wonder some of us just don’t want to get involved”.

That hilarious if not invincible defeatism is the heart of the matter. Black commentators when challenged in the public debate are finding it harder to defend their corner in a country which is probably one of the least racist, multicultural countries in the world which gives black people opportunities. Indeed, the commentators’ journalistic career before becoming Oped editor at the Independent in 2018 appears to be pretty unremarkable, to say the least and many might argue that positive discrimination has placed her in a top job there. Is it an insecurity pang from her then that to continue to carry off the work of a respected journalist that racism needs to be a subject which is dominated by such ‘marginalised’ people? And if so, then why not let the truly marginalised take it, rather than those who preach about poverty from ivory towers?

The so-called liberal in the UK which Fox chooses to attack do not like being the subject of debate as people might look too closely at their theatre props and see a different story. Fox being threatened with death threats by such ‘marginals’ who don’t want anyone else to debate the issue of race is symptomatic of an advanced multicultural country which is confused at best and bewildered at worst by its colonial history. The PC cavalcade of those who wish to destroy all debate by white males in Britain is very much why and how Boris took the top job. But we should be very worried about Laurence Fox leaving Twitter as it is a victory for “black” commentators like Shande-Baptiste who goes cold all over when she sees a white male talk about her favourite subject.

Turin soccer club Juventus, home of Christian Ronaldo, arguably the world’s most famous football star, has cancelled practice until further notice and placed its youth team under quarantine over fears several players may have come into contact with infected players on a rival team.

According to the Daily Mail, the Juventus’ management made the decision after learning that three players and a manager from the youth team of Serie C Pianese had tested positive for the virus. The two youth squads recently played each other.

So far, no Juve players have displayed any symptoms of the virus, and none have tested positive. However, the youth team will need to self-quarantine until March 8.

The training ban will extend to Ronaldo and his teammates on the main squad. The squad recently posted a match against Inter Milan, a team that recently played a match in an empty stadium, as several cases have been detected in Milan, a city in Lombardy, the worst-hit province in Italy.

A statement from the Serie A champions read: “The situation is being taken very seriously and the medical staff have told all the players to keep washing their hands and using hand gels.”

“No one has tested positive but bearing in mind the Inter game has been postponed because of health concerns nothing is being taken for granted.”

The team confirmed that “some of the players” from the youth squad trained with Ronaldo a few days ago. Just imagine the hysteria that would ensue if CR7 caught the coronavirus.

“Some of the players involved in the Under 23 match did train midweek with Ronaldo and the first team but that will now not happen again for a few weeks.”

Meanwhile, the Pianese squad has released a statement about the outbreak.

“At the moment those infected are four, three players and a team official.”

“The first is a young player who had started to experience a slight rise in temperature and headache last Saturday, when the team was away to Alessandria to play a championship game.”

“The second player is in self-isolation at his home, while not showing any symptoms, as well as the third player who is slightly feverish.”

“The fourth person tested positive for the swab is a club official who this morning, after spending the night in a feverish state, was transported by ambulance to the hospital in Siena.”

“Currently all the players, the technical staff and the managers present during the trip last weekend are in a 15-day quarantine.”

As the outbreak worsens, the CEO of Inter Milan speculated that the whole Serie A season could come to an early halt if Italy fails to suppress the outbreak.

The number of confirmed cases in Italy reached 1,128 since the start of the epidemic, up from 888 on Friday. According to Al Jazeera, health officials said only 52% of individuals tested showed few to no symptoms.

Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that the constitutionally guaranteed religious freedoms of Muslims can be curtailed if public displays of religiosity – in this case wearing Islamic headscarves in German courtrooms – endanger the ideological and religious neutrality of the state.

The court’s landmark ruling effectively smashes a backdoor effort to enshrine Sharia law into the German legal system.

The case involves a 38-year-old German-Moroccan law student who was born in Frankfurt and customarily wears a headscarf in public. In January 2017, she began legal training in the German state of Hesse, where the law bans any expression of religion in its courtrooms for judges, lawyers and legal trainees.

According to the law, legal trainees (rechtsreferendar) are allowed to wear a headscarf — except when they are performing certain official tasks in which they serve as representatives of the judiciary or the state. This means, for instance, that trainee lawyers are not allowed to wear a headscarf when presiding over a hearing, taking evidence or representing the public prosecution office.

The complainant filed a lawsuit claiming that the headscarf ban interfered with her right to freedom of religion. She argued that she was being forced to choose between performing the intended tasks or fulfilling a religious clothing requirement that she considers imperative.

The Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) ruled that, according to the law in Hesse, legal trainees have a duty to conduct themselves neutrally with respect to religion and that, when wearing a headscarf, the complainant was therefore barred from performing any tasks in the course of which she might be perceived as being a representative of the justice system or the state.

The complainant filed an appeal, which was rejected by the Hesse Higher Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgerichtshof). She then filed an appeal with the Federal Constitutional Court, which affirmed the lower court rulings. In a statement published on February 27, 2020, the high court explained:

“The principle of the state’s religious and ideological neutrality can be considered a constitutional interest that may justify an interference with freedom of religion in this case. The state’s duty to be neutral necessarily also entails a duty for public officials to be neutral since the state can only act through individuals. However, when public officials exercise their fundamental rights as private individuals in the performance of their duties, this cannot be attributed to the state in every case. Yet it can potentially be attributed to the state in cases where the state has specific influence on the visible character of an official act — as is the case in the justice system.

“Freedom of religion can be subject to a further constitutional limitation inherent in the Basic Law (Grundgesetz): the proper functioning of the justice system in general, which is one of the essential elements underpinning the rule of law and is firmly rooted in the values enshrined in the Basic Law, given that every court decision ultimately serves to safeguard fundamental rights.

“The proper functioning of the justice system requires that society not only place trust in individual judges, but also in the justice system in general. It is true that it will not be possible to achieve absolute trust among the entire population. However, it falls to the state to improve levels of trust. In the present case, the negative freedom of religion afforded parties to legal proceedings is also an argument in favor of the ban on wearing a headscarf.

“In the justice system, the state exercises public authority vis-à-vis the individual in the classic hierarchical sense, which gives rise to more serious impairments than public authority exercised in interdenominational state schools, which are meant to reflect society’s pluralism in religious matters….

“From a constitutional-law perspective, the legislature’s decision to establish a duty of neutral conduct with respect to ideological and religious matters for legal trainees must therefore be respected….

“In support of the complainant’s position, it must be taken into consideration that to her, the headscarf is not only a sign of affiliation with a certain religious group that could be taken off at any time — like, for example, the cross worn on a necklace. Rather, wearing the headscarf to her means fulfilling a requirement that she considers imperative. As there is no similarly widespread equivalent requirement in the Christian faith, a general ban on manifestations of religious belief has a stronger impact on the complainant than on other religious public officials….

“In support of the constitutionality of the ban, it must be taken into consideration that it is limited to a few individual tasks. The ban applies where legal trainees perform judicial tasks, represent the public prosecution office in trial hearings and take on quasi-judicial roles. In doing so, legal trainees — like civil servants — must represent the values that the Basic Law lays down for the justice system.”

Hesse’s Minister of Justice Eva Kühne-Hörmann (CDU) described the ruling as “groundbreaking” (wegweisend):

“With this groundbreaking decision, the court sent an important signal in favor of the ideological neutrality of state institutions. Especially in today’s society, in which people from many countries around the world live with different cultural biographies and also with different religions, the state order must place more value than ever on its ideological neutrality. This is only possible if the state parties to judicial proceedings are not allowed to show religious insignia.“

Islamic head coverings have been a recurring issue in Germany, where the Muslim population has surpassed six million to become approximately 7.2% of the overall population of 83 million, according to calculations by Gatestone Institute.

On February 3, 2020, the Hamburg Higher Administrative Court (Oberverwaltungsgericht) ruled that a 16-year-old German-Egyptian student was allowed to wear a niqab, a garment that covers the face, at a vocational school in Hammerbrook.

Hamburg education officials had ordered the girl not wear the veil at school. In a statement, the court explained that according to the Hamburg School Act as it is currently written:

“Education officials cannot require the student to refrain from covering her face while at school. The student can claim the right to an unconditionally protected freedom of religion. Interferences with this fundamental right require a sufficiently defined legal basis.”

Hamburg politicians from across the political spectrum have vowed to change the law to ensure that full-face veils are banned in classrooms. Hamburg’s Senator for Education Ties Rabe, who belongs to the center-left Social Democrats, said:

“In school, it is a matter of course that the teachers and the pupils have an open, free face. This is the only way that school and teaching can function. That is why we are going to change the school law quickly so that this is guaranteed in the future too.”

Hamburg Deputy Mayor Katharina Fegebank from the Greens party also called for the law to be changed:

“The burqa and the niqab are, for me, symbols of oppression. Successful school lessons need good communication at eye level. For this, it is important to see the face of the other. This is not possible with a full veil. That is why we reject them.”

The opposition parties in Hamburg’s parliament, the Christian Democrats (CDU), the Free Democrats (FDP) and the conservative AfD, also support banning niqabs and burqas from classrooms.

The student’s lawyer, Alexander Heyers, said that while his client “does not see herself as the Greta Thunberg of Islam,” a ban would be tantamount to a declaration of war. He has threatened to take the case to the Federal Constitutional Court: “Political questions that have a deep impact on fundamental rights should be clarified before the Federal Constitutional Court.”

In the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, which is governed by a coalition of Greens and Christian Democrats, Culture Minister Susanne Eisenmann (CDU) also announced a ban on veils through adjustments to school legislation:

“Religious freedom has its limits — specifically at our schools, when teachers can literally no longer look at each other’s faces. We do not tolerate full veiling at our schools.”

Other headscarf-related bans in Germany include:

January 29, 2020. The University of Kiel (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, CAU) banned students from wearing face-covering veils while in class:

“The Presidium of the CAU has to ensure that the minimum requirements for communication in research, teaching and administration necessary for the fulfillment of university tasks are ensured. Open communication, which is based not only on the spoken word, but also on facial expressions and gestures, is one of these minimum requirements. Since a face veil hinders this open communication, it must not be worn in courses, exams and discussions relating to study, teaching and advice in the broadest sense.”

December 2019. Officials in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) abandoned plans to ban girls under the age of 14 from wearing headscarves or hijabs in NRW schools. Secretary of State for Integration Serap Güler said that after lengthy legal review, she determined that such a ban had no chance of being upheld by the Federal Constitutional Court.

September 2018. The Federal Council of the State of Lower Saxony approved an amendment that prohibits persons involved in court hearing — in particular parties, witnesses and legal representatives — from covering their faces in whole or in part ban on face coverings in courts. Justice Minister Barbara Havliza explained:

“Checking statements for their truthfulness is often of crucial importance in court proceedings. The judges must be able to look those involved in the face because the facial expressions sometimes say more than words. In addition, a face covering can make it difficult or impossible to identify people.”

August 2018. The justice ministers of Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) presented a draft amendment to the Court Constitution Act (Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz) that would ban face-covering veils in all German courts. NRW Justice Minister Peter Biesenbach (CDU) said:

“Without facial expressions and gestures, a statement is hardly worth anything. If a witness’s sweat is on his forehead or his facial features slip away, judges must be able to take this into account when evaluating a statement.”

October 2017. The Federal Highway Code (Straßenverkehrsordnung) banned motorists wearing face coverings while driving.

June 2017. The Bundestag banned civil servants and military personnel from covering their faces in public.