40 "RELATING TO CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE LAWS ON THE USE OF LANGUAGES IN EDUCATION IN BELGIUM" v. BELGIUM (MERITS) JUDGMENT leads certain parents to separate themselves from their children, such a separation is not imposed by this legislation: it results from the choice of the parents who place their children in schools situated outside the Dutch unilingual region with the sole purpose of avoiding their being taught in Dutch, that is to say in one of Belgium’s national languages. It remains to be decided whether the legal provisions criticised violate the first sentence of Article 2 of the Protocol or Article 8 of the Convention, read in conjunction with Article 14 (art. 14+P1-2, art. 14+8). Here again, the reply must be negative. It is true that the legislature has instituted an educational system which, in the Dutch unilingual region, exclusively encourages teaching in Dutch, in the same way as it establishes the linguistic homogeneity of education in the French unilingual region. These differences in treatment of the two national languages in the two unilingual regions are, however, compatible with Article 2 of the Protocol (P1-2), as the Court has interpreted it, and with Article 8 (art. 8) of the Convention, also when read in conjunction with Article 14 (art. 14+P1-2, art. 14+8). Article 14 (art. 14) does not prohibit distinctions in treatment which are founded on an objective assessment of essentially different factual circumstances and which, being based on the public interest strike a fair balance between the protection of the interests of the community and respect for the rights and freedoms safeguarded by the Convention. In examining whether the legal provisions which have been attacked satisfy these criteria, the Court finds that their purpose is to achieve linguistic unity within the two large regions of Belgium in which a large majority of the population speaks only one of the two national languages. This legislation makes scarcely viable schools in which teaching is conducted solely in the national language that is not that of the majority of the inhabitants of the region. In other words, it tends to prevent, in the Dutch-unilingual region, the establishment or maintenance of schools which teach only in French. Such a measure cannot be considered arbitrary. To begin with, it is based on the objective element which the region constitutes. Furthermore it is based on a public interest, namely, to ensure that all schools dependent on the State and existing in a unilingual region conduct their teaching in the language which is essentially that of the region. This part of the legislation does not violate the rights of the individual. On this point, the Court observes that the provisions which are challenged concern only official or subsidised education. They in no way prevent, in the Dutch-unilingual region, the organisation of independent Frenchlanguage education, which in any case still exists there to a certain extent. The Court, therefore, does not consider that the measures adopted in this matter by the Belgian legislature are so disproportionate to the requirements of the public interest which is being pursued as to constitute a discrimination contrary to Article 14 of the Convention, read in conjunction