10 "RELATING TO CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE LAWS ON THE USE OF LANGUAGES IN EDUCATION IN BELGIUM" v. BELGIUM (MERITS) JUDGMENT - by the Belgian Government on 30th November 1967: "The submissions we had the honour to make to the Court (on 27th November 1967) may be considered as final ones." THE LAWS ON THE USE EDUCATION IN BELGIUM OF LANGUAGES IN 8. The laws on the use of languages in education in Belgium have evolved considerably since the foundation of the Kingdom (1830), within the wider framework of the evolution of the "Belgian linguistic problem" on which the Commission and the Belgian Government have furnished detailed explanations to the Court (cf. in particular, paragraph 344 of the Report, and the Note of the hearing of the morning of 27th November 1967). Before examining and deciding the six questions enumerated in the respective submissions of those appearing before it, the Court believes that it is useful to give a brief outline of the principal laws on language in education which have been passed in Belgium between 1914 and the present day. 9. Article 17 of the Belgian Constitution of 7th February 1831 provides: "Education shall be unrestricted; all measures of restriction are prohibited; crimes may be punished only in accordance with the law. Public education provided at the expense of the State shall also be regulated by law." Moreover, Article 23 provides: "The use of the languages spoken in Belgium is optional. This matter may be regulated only by law and only as regards the acts of the public authority and the judicial matters." These two Articles have never been amended. 10. The earliest linguistic laws concerned not education but criminal procedure (Acts of 1870 and 1908) as well as the vote and the promulgation of laws (Act of 1898). Until 1932 parents in Belgium enjoyed a fairly wide freedom with regard to the language of education. An Act of 19th May 1914 made primary education compulsory. According to Section 15, a child’s maternal or usual language, determined on the declaration made by the head of the family, was the language of instruction in each grade throughout the country. If the head of the school considered that the child had not the ability to profit from the instruction in the language designated, the head of the family might appeal to the inspectorate. Thanks to fairly broad interpretation of the text, some Dutch-speaking parents had their children educated in French. In some parts of Flanders there were, in addition to Dutch-language primary schools, State and private Frenchlanguage primary schools, whilst secondary education was provided