The French cabinet approved a draft law to ban the Muslim full-face veil from public spaces on Wednesday, opening the way for the text to go before parliament in July.
"In this matter the government is taking a path it knows to be difficult, but a path it knows to be just," President Nicolas Sarkozy told the assembled ministers, according to his office.
While Sarkozy’s right-wing majority is expected to be able to push the law through parliament, constitutional experts have warned that it could be thrown out by judges and might fall foul of European law.
"We are an old nation united around a certain idea of human dignity, and in particular of a woman’s dignity, around a certain idea of how to live together," Sarkozy insisted.
"The full veil that hides the face completely harms those values, which are so fundamental to us, so essential to the republican compact."
According to the text of the law, no-one in France will be allowed to wear a garment "designed to hide the face". Those who flout it will be fined €150 ($180) or sent on a course to learn the values of French citizenship.
Anyone who forces someone through threats, violence or misuse of a position of authority to cover her face because of her sex will be jailed for a year and fined €15,000, the law says.
The law defines public spaces broadly to include all thoroughfares, all premises — such as shops, cinemas, restaurants and markets — open to the public and all government buildings.
France’s highest administrative legal body, the Council of State, had warned the government that it might be legally impossible to impose and enforce such a ban, but Sarkozy and his supporters are determined to press on.
Some opposition Socialists have declared they will vote against a ban they feel will be impossible to enforce, and many Muslim groups oppose a ban they fear will stigmatize their religion.
Sarkozy asks Muslims not to feel hurt
President Sarkozy urged French Muslims on Wednesday not to feel hurt or stigmatized by the planned ban.
"This is a decision one doesn’t take lightly," he said. "Nobody should feel hurt or stigmatized. I’m thinking in particular of our Muslim compatriots, who have their place in the republic and should feel respected,." Sarkozy told a cabinet meeting
Only a tiny minority of Muslim women in Europe wear full veils, called niqabs or burqas, but their numbers are growing. The Belgian parliament has already begun debating a ban there and could also impose it in the coming months.
France has reaped criticism from Muslim groups and rights advocates for the planned "burqa ban", which Sarkozy called for last year to counter Islamist views among some Muslims.
The country’s top legal advisory body, the Council of State, has twice warned that a complete ban on veils in public would be unconstitutional, but Sarkozy said the government had decided "in good conscience" that it must outlaw them.