"RELATING TO CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE LAWS ON THE USE OF LANGUAGES IN EDUCATION IN BELGIUM" v. BELGIUM (MERITS) JUDGMENT 17 to provide or subsidise a particular type of education, it must "refrain from any discriminatory measure", as otherwise it violates Article 2 (P1-2). In their opinion this text must be interpreted "in good faith and in all fairness", and its Application may "vary from one State to another depending on the special circumstances peculiar to each State". In particular, the "cultural" right to education, guaranteed by the first sentence, means, on analysis, a "right to the performance of a service", a "right to have the State take action". No doubt Article 2 (P1-2) states this in a negative way but the abandonment of the positive formula which was originally contemplated, does not have the significance which is attributed to it by the respondent Government. "To make existing teaching available to all": this is the service which it is required of Contracting States to perform. According to the Belgian Government the Convention and the Protocol (P1) are inspired on the whole by the classic conception of freedoms, in contrast to rights, differing in this respect from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and from the European Social Charter. The individual freedoms place purely negative duties on the governmental authorities (pouvoirs publics) (negative status, status libertatis). The commitments undertaken by the States by virtue of the Convention and the Protocol possess therefore an essentially negative character. This is the case, in particular, with the first sentence of Article 2 of the Protocol (P1-2): it obliges the State "not to prevent persons within its jurisdiction from obtaining education" but does not require it to provide itself "education and teaching for its citizens"; in short, it gives rise "above-all" to a "prohibition against prohibition". In effect, the right to education is stated in negative terms ("No person shall be denied ..."), whereas the Consultative Assembly had advocated in August 1950 a positive formula ("Everyone has the right to ..."). This alteration, introduced in 1951 by the governmental experts, was far from being fortuitous; it shows that the States did not intend to bind themselves "to take positive steps" in the matter. In this respect the "preparatory work" confirms very clearly the conclusions drawn from the text itself; furthermore, the declarations made by the Netherlands (20th March 1952) and by the Federal Republic of Germany (13th February 1957) concerning Article 2 (P1-2) point in the same direction. Consequently the first sentence of Article 2 (P1-2) does not oblige the Contracting States to take any beneficial measures such as the opening or subsidising of schools and official recognition of school-leaving certificates. Nor does it safeguard the right of each person to receive an education in conformity with his cultural and linguistic preferences; these are in no way protected by the second sentence of Article 2 (P1-2), which is limited to demanding respect for "religious and philosophical convictions"; they are, a fortiori, outside the scope of the first sentence. It follows that Article 2 (P1-2) in no wise condemns "a unilingual policy" in the sphere of education; it also leaves to a "bilingual country" the opportunity of deciding that "in order to meet their