46 "RELATING TO CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE LAWS ON THE USE OF LANGUAGES IN EDUCATION IN BELGIUM" v. BELGIUM (MERITS) JUDGMENT from so doing, the withdrawal of subsidies from schools which do not satisfy the requirements to which the State subjects the grant of such subsidies - in this case the condition that teaching should be conducted exclusively in accordance with the linguistic legislation - does not come within the scope of this Article (P1-2). There is likewise no breach of Article 8 (art. 8) of the Convention for the same reasons as were explained above in the reply to the first question. Nor does the Court find any violation of Article 2 of the Protocol and of Article 8 of the Convention, read in conjunction with Article 14 (art. 14+P12, art. 14+8). The Court has already stated, with respect to the first question, that measures which tend to ensure that, in the unilingual regions, the teaching language of official or subsidised schools should be exclusively that of the region, are not arbitrary and therefore not discriminatory. These measures do not prevent French-speaking parents who wish to provide a French education for their children from doing so, either in non-subsidised private schools, or in schools in the French unilingual region or in the Greater Brussels District. The legislation to which the first question has reference does not permit the establishment or functioning, in the Dutch unilingual region, of official or subsidised schools providing education in French. The legislation with which the second question is concerned goes further; by the total withdrawal of subsidies, it makes it impossible, in the same region, for teaching in French to be conducted as a secondary activity by a subsidised Dutch-language school. The Commission has emphasised that such a withdrawal "bears hard on the French-speaking children" in Flanders, particularly since the majority of the schools in Flanders which provided education in French were "mixedlanguage" schools. However, while recognising that this is a harsh measure, the Court cannot share the Commission’s opinion that such a hardship is forbidden by a joint reading of the first sentence of Article 2 of the Protocol (P1-2) and Article 14 (art. 14) of the Convention. This opinion could be accepted only if the "hardship" were to amount to a distinction in treatment of an arbitrary and therefore discriminatory nature. The Court has, however, found that, whatever their severity, the legal or administrative provisions touched on by the first question are based on objective criteria. The same is true of the measure here in question. Its purpose is to avoid the possibility of education which the State does not wish to subsidise - for reasons which are completely compatible with Article 2 of the Protocol (P1-2) and Articles 8 and 14 (art. 8, art. 14) of the Convention - benefiting, in some way or another, from subsidies destined for education which is in conformity with the linguistic legislation. This purpose is plausible in itself and it is not for the Court to determine whether it is possible to realise it in another way.