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    1. The Applicants observe that according to Section 5, first paragraph, of the Act of 30th July 1963, applicable in the Greater Brussels area, "classes in which the medium of instruction is French and classes in which the medium of instruction is Dutch may not be placed under a single direction (...)". This provision does not apply to the Dutch-speaking region, but the circulars of 9th and 29th August 1963 lead, according to the better view, to the same results: they require the establishments concerned to close down their French classes, or to split into two. At Antwerp, the Institut St Joseph des Filles de Marie and the Collège Marie-José (amalgamated with the High School) have chosen the second solution. They have erected a wall between the two sections. In the opinion of the Applicants, the construction of such a wall "hurts the feelings of the child who is thus liable to develop a complex" and to be the victim of "a humiliating segregation". The establishments concerned are moreover doomed sooner or later to close down as a result of the cumulative effect of legal measures and other pressures; already several of them have ceased all instruction in French after the entry into force of the 1963 legislation.
    2. Furthermore the Applicants insist on the necessity of distinguishing between the refusal to grant subsidies and their withdrawal, the latter possessing a "punitive character".
      1. 3. Arguments presented before the Court by the Belgian Government and by the Commission
      <LI value=11>According to the Belgian Government, the withdrawal of subsidies violates neither Article 2 of the Protocol (P1-2) nor Article 8 (art. 8) of the Convention, which do not oblige the States to provide subsidies and do not safeguard the cultural or linguistic preferences of parents; nor does it infringe Article 14 (art. 14) of the Convention which has "legal effects" only when the Convention "imposes" on States "a certain action" or authorises them to "limit the exercise of the rights and the enjoyment of the freedoms guaranteed" which is not so in the present case (cf. supra). To refrain from providing parallel teaching "entirely or partially in a language other than that of the region", is a simple "condition of the privileges which are represented by subsidies", privileges the withdrawal of which "has nothing to do with the subject matter of the Convention and Protocol".
      The other arguments of the Belgian Government are of a subsidiary character; they apply only in the event of the Court's adopting the wide interpretation given to Article 14 (art. 14) by the majority of the Commission. The Belgian Government finds it "difficult to detect any difference between privileges granted to the Dutch-speaking population and disadvantages for the French-speaking population", and consequently also between the refusal to grant subsidies and their withdrawal. In endeavouring to show that this last measure does not constitute a discrimination, it emphasises that "one of the guiding principles of Belgian legislation" consists in subjecting "subsidised private education" to the "same rules" as "official education" and in preventing "evasion of the law". The "Dutch-language schools which created French-language sections" frequently resorted to "expedients, the smartness of which was sometimes very questionable, to enable the French-language sections to benefit, despite everything, from the grants" allotted "for Dutch-language education". According to the Belgian Government, the heads of these establishments moreover managed "in nearly all cases" to "create a French-language section solely because they were in charge of subsidised and recognised Dutch-language schools". Consequently, the French language sections were generally not "viable except as annexes of Dutch-language schools", and it was possible to have "serious reservations as to the quality of the education" they provided. Certain establishments had stopped all French-language education since 1963-1964. "A few French-language sections, large enough to be independently viable", had however "survived by converting themselves into independent schools". Moreover, the Convention, less generous in this respect than the Belgian Constitution, does not enshrine the right to follow "a linguistic policy not in conformity with that of the national authorities", and the linguistic policy of the Belgian State is pursuing a "legitimate objective" the evaluation of which is not within the competence of the Commission and the Court; this objective is to ensure the formation of Dutch-speaking élites in Flanders by struggling against the "phenomenon of francisation" which once existed there.
    3. The Commission confirmed before the Court the opinion expressed by the majority of its members on this question in its Report. In its view the withdrawal of subsidies - like the refusal to grant them - violates neither Article 8 (art. 8) of the Convention nor the second sentence of Article 2 of the Protocol (P1-2), whether these provisions are read "in isolation" or "in conjunction" with Article 14 (art. 14+P1-2, art. 14+8) of the Convention; nor does it infringe the first sentence of Article 2 of the Protocol as long as this is not taken in conjunction with Article 14 (art. 14+P1-2) (cf. supra).
      On the other hand the Commission is of the opinion, by seven votes to five, that this measure does not comply with the right to education as it is safeguarded by the first sentence of Article 2 of the Protocol in conjunction with Article 14 (art. 14+P1-2) of the Convention. It considers, in effect, on the basis of its interpretation of Article 14 (art. 14) mentioned above ("scope" and "concept of discrimination": cf. supra), that the withdrawal of subsidies amounts to an "unjustifiable hardship": going far beyond the encouragement, "in either region, of the local language and culture", it tends to "prevent the spread, if not the maintenance even, in one region, of the language and culture of the other region" and to "assimilate minorities into the language of their surroundings". In this connection, the Commission states that the withdrawal of subsidies "is entailed even in the maintenance of nursery classes which do not conform to the legislation in issue"; that it applies to schools which "from the technical and academic points of view" meet "in full the requirements of the law" since they benefited from subsidies before the entry into force of the 1963 Acts; that it in actual fact concerns only establishments situated in Flanders as there do not seem to be comparable establishments situated in Wallonia; that it "bears hard on French-speaking children, without giving any advantage to Dutch-speaking children" and that it "takes the form of a punitive sanction whose victims, incidentally, are not the educational establishments affected but the French-speaking inhabitants" of the Dutch-speaking region and more precisely, in this case, "all the signatories of the six Applications" referred to the Court.
      The Commission further emphasises that the education in French in question "met a need": for it does not believe that private schools would arrange "costly classes without subsidies if the number of pupils were not adequate". As regards "evasions of the law", the Commission believes that the Schools Inspectorate could easily "unmask" them and on discovering them "impose the penalty of withdrawal of the grant". But this is not what is done. "The mere fact that a school provides unsubsidised partial or complete education in French, automatically, by a (...) guillotine effect, entails the withdrawal of all grants".
      Five members of the Commission however find no violation on the point in question; the Commission draws the attention of the Court to their dissenting opinions.
      4. Decision of the Court
    4. The situation with which the second question is concerned is bound up with that dealt with in the first. The legal provisions mentioned in the first render impossible, in the Dutch unilingual region, the establishment or subsidising by the State of schools which conduct education in French. The legal and administrative measures to which the second question relates, merely supplement them: they tend to prevent the operating of "mixed language" schools which, in a unilingual region - in this case, the Dutch unilingual region - provide, in the form of non-subsidised classes and in addition to instruction given in the language of the region, full or partial instruction in another language. What is in issue, therefore, is a whole series of provisions with a common aim, namely, the protection of the linguistic homogeneity of the region.
      The Court's reply to the second question is the same as that already given to the first.
      Neither Article 2 of the Protocol (P1-2), nor Article 8 (art. 8) of the Convention are violated by the provisions in dispute.
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