minority education rights and interpret applicable standards to ensure coherence in their application. The following section overviews the jurisprudence of international and regional courts to highlight the application of some of these standards. Access to education Equality in access to education can be denied directly or indirectly through imposition of additional conditions, which may disadvantage members of a particular group. Therefore, equal access to education requires it to be nondiscriminatory; in addition, education should be physically and economically accessible. These aspects of the right to access education have featured in the jurisprudence of international courts. Case study: Belgian Linguistics The ECtHR’s first decision on access to education in Belgian Linguistics197 has been one of the most influential judgments in this area. The case was brought by a large number of French-speaking parents living in Dutchspeaking districts of Belgium. The applicants complained that French-speaking children whose parents’ place of residence was in the Dutch-speaking region were denied access to schools in bilingual communes on the outskirts of Brussels which enjoyed ‘special status’. Access to these bilingual schools was limited to four categories of children: children who had attended classes in 1962–3; children and family members of university employees, students and teaching staff; children of foreign nationality; and children of French-speaking Belgians living outside the Dutch-speaking region.198 Thus, children of Frenchspeaking parents who lived in the unilingual Flemish region were denied access to schools in these communes. In contrast, in the same communes Dutch classes were open to all children irrespective of their language or place of residence of their parents.199 In its analysis, the ECtHR first established that P1-2 did not impose any linguistic requirements; therefore, the right to education under this provision was not violated in Belgium because, irrespective of their language children had access to public or subsidized education in Dutchlanguage schools. Moreover, the Convention did not guarantee the right to be educated in the language of parents by the public authorities or their financial support.200 Nevertheless, the ECtHR indirectly recognized general group-oriented language/education policies and the need to secure protection of certain individuals or groups against discrimination as part of this process. Thus, the Court ruled that denial of access to existing schools was discriminatory because it stemmed solely from considerations relating to residence; accordingly a breach of P1-2 in conjunction with Article 14 ECHR was found. This finding is very cautious: the ECtHR did not require Belgium to guarantee the access of French-speaking children to minority schools. Instead, the Court found that the requirement of residence was disproportional to the aims pursued. As to the requirement of non-discriminatory access to education, the case of D.H. and Others v The Czech Republic,201 where the Grand Chamber established that indirect discrimination in access to education based on racial or ethnic origin is prohibited, provides strong guarantees. Furthermore, the case informed the ECtHR’s subsequent jurisprudence. Thus, in Affaire Sampanis et Autres c. Grèce,202 the ECtHR found that the placement of Roma children in separate classes in a mainstream primary school in a Greek municipality constituted indirect discrimination. Furthermore, in the Case of Oršuš and Others v Croatia 203 Roma children were placed in Roma-only classes within certain local primary schools. Croatia maintained that the measure was adopted based on the fact that Roma children did not have adequate command of the Croatian language. The First Section of the ECtHR accepted the government’s justification of differential treatment and found no violation of Article 14 ECHR. However, the applicants’ request to refer the case to the Grand Chamber succeeded: relying on D.H. and Others and Sampanis, the applicants claimed indirect discrimination, and even direct discrimination based on race and ethnicity. On 16 March 2010, the Grand Chamber reversed the Chamber’s decision and found a violation of Article 14 ECHR taken together with P1-2. The Grand Chamber held that a difference in treatment of Roma children constituted indirect discrimination. The Advisory Committee, the body monitoring the implementation of the FCNM, took a similar stance in its Opinions based on Article 12(3) FCNM, which protects access to education and obliges states to promote ‘equal opportunities for access to education at all levels for persons belonging to national minorities’. A clear wording of the provision allowed the Advisory Committee to set a higher threshold for the implementation of Article 12. Thus, in its Opinion on Bosnia and Herzegovina,204 Italy,205 Slovakia,206 etc., the Advisory Committee expressed its concern about high level of absenteeism of Roma children; moreover, the Committee criticized the practice of placing Roma children in special schools.207 In the view of the Committee, ‘[s]egregated education, often of lower MINORITY GROUPS AND LITIGATION: A REVIEW OF DEVELOPMENTS IN INTERNATIONAL AND REGIONAL JURISPRUDENCE 21