"RELATING TO CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE LAWS ON THE USE OF LANGUAGES IN EDUCATION IN BELGIUM" v. BELGIUM (MERITS) JUDGMENT 43 certain extra-legal pressures (the case of the Public secondary school at Renaix, etc.). The Applicants observe that according to Section 5, first paragraph, of the Act of 30th July 1963, applicable in the Greater Brussels area, "classes in which the medium of instruction is French and classes in which the medium of instruction is Dutch may not be placed under a single direction (...)". This provision does not apply to the Dutch-speaking region, but the circulars of 9th and 29th August 1963 lead, according to the better view, to the same results: they require the establishments concerned to close down their French classes, or to split into two. At Antwerp, the Institut St Joseph des Filles de Marie and the Collège Marie-José (amalgamated with the High School) have chosen the second solution. They have erected a wall between the two sections. In the opinion of the Applicants, the construction of such a wall "hurts the feelings of the child who is thus liable to develop a complex" and to be the victim of "a humiliating segregation". The establishments concerned are moreover doomed sooner or later to close down as a result of the cumulative effect of legal measures and other pressures; already several of them have ceased all instruction in French after the entry into force of the 1963 legislation. Furthermore the Applicants insist on the necessity of distinguishing between the refusal to grant subsidies and their withdrawal, the latter possessing a "punitive character". 3. Arguments presented before the Court by the Belgian Government and by the Commission 11. According to the Belgian Government, the withdrawal of subsidies violates neither Article 2 of the Protocol (P1-2) nor Article 8 (art. 8) of the Convention, which do not oblige the States to provide subsidies and do not safeguard the cultural or linguistic preferences of parents; nor does it infringe Article 14 (art. 14) of the Convention which has "legal effects" only when the Convention "imposes" on States "a certain action" or authorises them to "limit the exercise of the rights and the enjoyment of the freedoms guaranteed" which is not so in the present case (cf. supra). To refrain from providing parallel teaching "entirely or partially in a language other than that of the region", is a simple "condition of the privileges which are represented by subsidies", privileges the withdrawal of which "has nothing to do with the subject matter of the Convention and Protocol". The other arguments of the Belgian Government are of a subsidiary character; they apply only in the event of the Court’s adopting the wide interpretation given to Article 14 (art. 14) by the majority of the Commission. The Belgian Government finds it "difficult to detect any difference between privileges granted to the Dutch-speaking population and disadvantages for the French-speaking population", and consequently also between the refusal to grant subsidies and their withdrawal. In