"When you are coming into contact either with different institutions, or, for instance, you are in court or you need to see someone's face at the border, then I would always back the authorities or the institutions that have put in place proper and sensible rules," David Cameron told the Today progam in Britain.
In September 2013, a judge ruled that a Muslim woman could stand trial in London while wearing a full-face veil — but must remove it when giving evidence. Following the ruling, the Lord Chief Justice for England and Wales called for a public consultation on whether women should be allowed to wear a niqab in court.
And the debate has erupted once again following the comments made by Britain's Prime Minister that schools in the UK should be allowed to stop Muslim girls from wearing full-face veils in the classroom.
"If for instance, a school has a particular uniform policy, sensitively put in place and all the rest of it, and people want to flout that uniform policy, often for reasons that aren't really connected with religion, I think you should always come down on the side of the school."
In 2007, the Netherlands banned Muslim women from wearing the full-face veil in schools and on public transport. France followed suit in 2011 and imposed an outright ban on women wearing a niqab in public. Critics of the ban claim it led to further segregation of Muslim communities and divided French society even further.
Germany proposed to ban the burqa at the end of 2015, whilst Bavaria already has a law banning teachers from wearing burqas in schools.
Ilse Aigner, Bavaria's finance minister called for Berlin to follow suit.
"The law on the burqa ban should be quickly passed by the government. It is first and foremost about showing one's face. It's about living together as a society and seeing one another. It doesn't fit to our society to hide oneself, and it contradicts our idea of sexual equality," Aigner said.
And sexual equality is high on the political agenda in Germany, following reports that hundreds of women were sexually assaulted by asylum seekers on New Year's Eve.
David Cameron's support for banning burqas in schools and institutions to help tackle segregation and radicalization in Britain comes at a time when communities across Europe are being driven ever further apart by the refugee crisis.
More than a million refugees and asylum seekers arrived in Europe in 2015.
