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    1. Section 1
    2. No one may be declared eligible to take the examination for the degree of candidat en philosophie et lettres, candidat en sciences or candidat en sciences naturelles et médicales unless he possesses a certificate of secondary schooling, issued in accordance with Sections 5 to 8 of the Act of 10th April 1890/3rd July 1891 on the conferring of academic degrees, certifying:
    3. A. If such certificate has been issued by an educational establishment situated in the Flemish region or in the Walloon region:<LI value=1>That the courses followed by the person concerned were made in the language of the region;
      <LI value=2>That the person concerned has, in each year of his schooling, been taught a second modern language, as referred to in Section 10 of the Act on the Language of Instruction in Primary and Secondary Schooling, for at least four hours a week.
      B. If the certificate has been issued by an educational establishment situated in a commune forming part of the Brussels urban complex or in a bilingual commune on the language boundary:
      <LI value=1>That the courses followed by the person concerned were so organised as to ensure that his maternal or usual language – either French or Flemish - was accorded pre-eminence as the language of instruction;
    4. That the person concerned has in each year of his schooling been taught Flemish, if his schooling has been in French, or French, if his schooling has been in Flemish, for at least four hours a week.
      Where the person concerned has had his schooling in one of the special classes referred to in Section 9 of the Act on the Language of Instruction in Primary and Secondary Schooling or in an analogous special class at an educational establishment not subject to the basic legislation on secondary education, his certificate of secondary schooling shall certify that he fulfilled the conditions imposed by the aforementioned Section 9 for admission to such a special class, and that the provisions of Section 10 of the said Act with regard to the teaching of a second language have been observed.
      The certificate shall clearly indicate under which regime the bearer's schooling was carried out.
      Section 2In applying the preceding Section to certificates issued by educational establishments not subject to the basic legislation on secondary schooling, the maternal or usual language of a child shall be determined by a declaration made by the head of his family. If there be any doubt as to the correctness of such declaration, the head of such establishment, or his deputy, assisted by two members of the teaching staff, shall, at the beginning of the school year, investigate the matter.
      The certificate of secondary schooling shall expressly state that this procedure has been strictly followed.
      Section 3Where the bearer of a certificate of secondary schooling has had his schooling at two or more educational establishments situated in different regions, such certificate shall certify that the provisions of Article 1 have been complied with in each region.
      Where the bearer began his secondary schooling abroad and completed it in Belgium, the certificate shall certify that the provisions of Section 1 have been complied with so far as concerns that part of his schooling which took place in Belgium.
      Section 5In applying the present Act to the German-speaking communes, exceptions justified by local conditions may be provided for by a motivated Royal Decree, to be published in the Official Gazette."
      The refusal to homologate certificates which do not conform with the linguistic legislation was later extended to various types of studies not governed by the Act of 15th July 1932 (Act of 27th July 1947, Royal Decree of 5th May 1953 and Section 23 of the Act of 29th May 1959).
    5. Section 24 of the Act of 30th July 1963, Sections 4-8 of which determine the language of instruction in the different regions of the Kingdom, repealed the Act of 15th July 1932. Under Section 19 of the 1963 Act:
      "Only school-leaving certificates that have been issued by the educational establishments referred to in Section 1 or by other independent educational establishments, in accordance with the provisions of this Act, may be subject to homologation.
      An exception shall be made in the case of certificates issued by a university by way of exception from Section 4 of this Act to recognise studies during a preparatory year for the degree of candidat ingénieur civil."
      Section 1, to which Section 19 refers, lays down that the Act of 30th July 1963 is applicable to "official nursery, primary and secondary schools and teachers' training, technical and artistic colleges" and to "similar independent establishments subsidised or recognised by the State". As for Section 4, it stipulates that "the medium of instruction is Dutch in the Dutch-language region, French in the French-language region and German in the German-language region, except for the cases laid down in Sections 6-8".
      The scope of Section 19, cited above, has been the subject of controversy between the Applicants and the Belgian Government. The Applicants maintained that, according to Section 19, taken with Section 1, the homologation of secondary school leaving certificates no longer depends, as under the Act of 15th July 1932, exclusively upon the "linguistic regularity" of the studies in question, but also upon that of the earlier nursery and primary education. The Belgian Government contested the accuracy of this interpretation. After examining the problem, the Commission came to the conclusion, together with the Belgian Government, that Section 19 in actual fact applies only to secondary education. The views developed by the Commission on this point seem entirely convincing to the Court.
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