38 "RELATING TO CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE LAWS ON THE USE OF LANGUAGES IN EDUCATION IN BELGIUM" v. BELGIUM (MERITS) JUDGMENT "entitled to refrain from positive action to meet the wishes of the Frenchspeaking population", the Commission questions "the result of a policy which thwarts them by measures of compulsion and by penalties". Is not such a policy in danger of "producing wrongs similar to those" which existed in the past, but "with the difference that this time it is the Frenchspeaking population which would suffer"? "In any event" a reading of the documents shows "clearly, in the view of the majority of the Commission, the intention of the Belgian Government and of the Belgian legislature to place the French speaking population in the Flemish region at a disadvantage in relation to the Dutch-speaking inhabitants"; the 1932 legislation created "numerous inequalities which have been markedly aggravated by the 1963 legislation to the detriment of the former and the benefit of the latter". In the opinion of the Commission, the inequalities derived from the laws on the use of languages in education in the unilingual regions do not however constitute discrimination contrary to Article 14 (art. 14). Despite the fact that the Belgian Government has not shown the necessity for "these inequalities and disadvantages", that "a double system of education, both Dutch and French", would certainly be sufficient to remove the wrongs which existed in the past, that unilingualism is not based on "financial, technical or administrative" requirements, and that no account is taken of the "number or degree of French-speaking persons" living in Flanders, five members of the Commission "hesitate to consider" the system "discriminatory". They recall that the Convention and the Protocol do not oblige States to establish or to subsidise any education at all; from this they infer that the Belgian State, "in encouraging education in Dutch" and "discouraging education in French" grants "a privilege" to the Flemishspeaking inhabitants without inflicting "hardships" on French-speaking inhabitants. They add that the Contracting States "are generally content to provide or give support to education in their national language" and to throw it open to "all their inhabitants" on equal conditions; the Belgian State has not departed from this rule "of international conduct": "it has simply adapted it, certainly in a summary manner, to the fact that there are several linguistic groups in Belgium". This being so, the five members concerned "do not feel it necessary to dwell on criticisms made by the Applicants of certain matters of detail in the legislation", for example the rule relating to the teaching of the second national language: if "the State’s refusal to establish or subsidise schools" does not constitute a discrimination "it necessarily follows that the State enjoys a (...) margin of discretion with regard to the organisation of curricula in official or subsidised education". Four other members also arrive, although for different reasons, at the conclusion that the system of language regulation in education in the unilingual regions is "not incompatible with the Convention". On the other hand, three members of the Commission do not accept this conclusion.