"RELATING TO CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE LAWS ON THE USE OF LANGUAGES IN EDUCATION IN BELGIUM" v. BELGIUM (MERITS) JUDGMENT 13 "geographical imperialism" (Report of the hearing held on the morning of 27th November 1967). The results of the language census of 1947 were not published until 1954. An Act of 2nd July 1954 attenuated the consequences which the census results should have entailed by virtue of the Acts of 28th June and 14th July 1932. A new population census was held at the end of 1961, but it included no questions concerning the use of languages (Section 3 of the Act of 24th July 1961 and the Royal Decree of 3rd November 1961). More recently an Act of 8th November 1962 changed the boundaries of provinces, districts and communes, and amended certain provisions of the Acts of 28th June and 14th July 1932. It had the effect of fixing the linguistic boundary permanently: thus, no matter what the extent of any changes that may occur in the language spoken by the population, such changes will not affect in any way the language regulations in the various communes. 14. The Acts of 14th and 15th July 1932 were repealed by that of 30th July 1963 "relating to the use of languages in education". For their part the Acts of 28th June 1932 on the use of languages in administrative matters and of 15th June 1935 on the use of languages in judicial matters have been replaced, the first by an Act of 2nd August 1963, the second by an Act of 9th August 1963. The Act of 30th July 1963 was adopted by a large majority in both the House of Representatives (157 votes to 33) and the Senate (120 votes to 17 with 7 abstentions). Although it lays down the same principles as the Act of 14th July 1932, it differs from the former on a number of points, some of which are important. The new Act applies (Section 1) to official teaching establishments and independent establishments subsidised or recognised by the State and covers all levels of education with the exception of universities, which moreover are not involved in the present case. With regard to the status of six communes on the periphery of Brussels, it refers to Section 7 of the Act of 2nd August 1963 on the use of languages for administrative matters. Section 2 also refers to that Act for the definition of linguistic regions. Section 3 completes the list of these regions specifying that the 25 communes on the linguistic boundary, the communes in the Germanspeaking area, the "Malmédy communes" and nine communes in Eastern Belgium have been assigned "a special system to protect their minorities". The boundaries of these areas are fixed permanently. Section 4 of the Act of 30th July 1963 is concerned with the unilingual regions. It lays down that the language of education shall be Dutch in the Dutch-speaking region, French in the French-speaking region and German in the German-speaking region, but makes provision for mitigation of this principle in the latter case (Section 8). In these regions, the study of the