Facts: The applicants were the parents of families in Belgium who applied for schooling on their behalf and on behalf of their children. As French speakers, they wanted their children to be educated in French despite living in a region classified under Belgian law as Dutch-speaking. By law, schooling had to be conducted in the official language of the region.
Complaint: the Francophone applicants alleged that the state was discriminating against them by failing to provide schooling in their language in violation of Article 14 of the Convention and of article 2 of Protocol No. 1
Holding: The ECHR found no violation of article 14 or of article 2.
Reasoning: The court held that legal and administrative
distinctions that are objective and reasonable are not violative of the
ECHR's anti-discrimination clause. In addition, the justifications must be
proportional to the purposes of maintaining such distinctions. As regards
Article 2 of Protocol No. 1, the Court ruled that it contains no linguistic
requirement and it leaves intact the freedom of States to subsidize private
schools or to refrain from doing so. It does not require the Contracting
States to establish educational establishments so the question is left to
the evaluation of the competent national authorities. Article 2, therefore,
concerns the freedom of education, not a social or cultural right to
education. Furthermore, the Court concluded that it is not per se
discrimination on the basis of ethnicity under Article 14 to limit the
number of languages in which instruction is given in state sponsored
schools.
