Several public swimming pools in southern Germany have tightened the rules on admissible swimwear.
They now effectively – though not expressly – ban women from wearing so-called “Burkinis”. These swimsuits that cover the wearer’s entire body from head to ankle have become a favourite with Muslim women.
The new bathing regulations in the city of Lörrach (Baden Wurttemberg), which came into force recently, required bathers at the city’s two public pools to wear opaque swimwear made of synthetic fibre.
For women “only tight-fitting swimwear was permitted. These may only reach up to the elbows and the base of the knees.”
This rules effectively bans Burkinis and similar swim-dresses. Men are only allowed to swim wearing “tight-fitting swimming trunks”.
A similar regulation was introduced at the nearby public pool at Müllheim (Baden-Württemberg) in March 2025.
The crackdown in Lörrach was not motivated by ideological motives but due to sanitary considerations, according to pool management.
“It has become fashionable for young men to wear underpants under their swimming shorts. Our pool staff had to deal with numerous discussions, which took up a lot of time,” Lörrach city spokesperson Alexander Fessler told local newspaper Schwäbische Zeitung on July 10.
He added that there had been “very many complaints by guests about improper swimwear worn by other guests”.
Fessel told German media the reactions to the new regulations had been largely positive. Brussels Signal contacted the city of Lörrach for further details but had not heard back at the time of writing.
Manuel Ostermann, deputy leader of the German Police Officers’ Union (DPolG), called the ban “a strong signal for sexual independence and individual freedom of women”.
He was also confident that the prohibition on loose swimming trunks for men might reduce the number of sexual crimes in the public pools.. That was, he claimed, because the perpetrators were disproportionately often foreigners who might by deterred by the requirement to wear speedos or other tight-fitting trunks.
The new swimwear regulations have, though, sparked outrage among The Greens party.
In Müllheim, it tried unsuccessfully to overturn the Burkini ban but succeeded in getting the city to introduce an exemption for children under 14 years of age.
City Greens party councilwoman Dora-Pfeifer-Suger told Schwäbische Zeitung: “The explanations make no sense to me.
“The water quality argument is used to exclude women in burkinis from swimming in the pool. There have even been problems when they just wanted to supervise their children in the pool. The material remains the same, it’s just a few centimetres more fabric.”
The Greens announced they would try again to have the Burkini ban overturned in autumn.
