EN Official Journal of the European Union CE 88/722

(2004/C 88 E/0743)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-1081/04

by Maria Sanders-ten Holte (ELDR) to the Commission

(6 April 2004)

Subject: The smaller European Schools

In its resolution of 17 December 2002, the European Parliament stated that the European Schools foster a sense of European identity and European integration. Yet various smaller European Schools are threatened with closure. The European Parliament also took the view that ways of cooperating (inter alia financially) with local, regional or national authorities should be explored, in which connection linguistic diversity should remain a priority.

In May 2003, the Board of Governors of the European Schools set up working parties to examine the viability of each of the small schools.

1. Have the working parties completed their examination and drawn up final reports? If not, why is the Commission now already proposing that the European subsidy to the schools be reduced?

2. What is the Commission's view of the possibility of making the European Baccalaureate available to far more pupils by means of cooperation with local, regional or national schools and by admitting more outside pupils to the European School?

3. The forthcoming enlargement of the EU will put a lot of pressure on the principle of teaching in pupils' mother tongue at the European Schools (which, it should not be forgotten, is one of the distinguishing features of these schools), because at the small schools in particular there would be too few pupils to permit a separate language section to be set up or because the infrastructure does not allow it. How will the Commission guarantee mother-tongue teaching in future?

4. Will the Commission encourage the Member States to second a mother tongue language teacher for those languages for which no separate language section has been or is to be set up?

Answer given by Mr Kinnock on behalf of the Commission

(30 April 2004)

The budgetary process to which the Honourable Member refers is the same irrespective of the size of a European School. During the meeting of the Administrative and Financial Committee of the Board of Governors held at the end of March 2004, the draft budgets for 2005 for each European School were unanimously agreed upon, with the agreement of the Director of each European School. The amount of subsidy requested from the EU budget was communicated to the Commission, and this amount will be submitted by the Commission to the budgetary authority.

The reports of the Working Groups concerning the long-term viability of the small European Schools were not connected to the 2005 draft budget, but were presented as a distinct issue to the Board of Governors meeting at the end of January 2004. Given the apparent lack of innovative and workable alternatives, in particular in relation to cooperation with local, regional or national schools, the Working Groups were given a last opportunity to further enrich their report, and to present a revised version at the meeting of the Board of Governors to be held at the end of April 2004.

On the subject of the wider availability of the European Baccalaureate in schools other than European Schools, the Commission is actively participating in a Working Group of the Board of Governors examining the feasibility and modalities of this proposal. However, the Commission does not consider that admitting more outside pupils to the highly subsidised European Schools is an appropriate means of opening up the European Baccalaureate. The Honourable Member will also realise that, since national education systems remain within the competence of Member States, the Commission has no effective power of initiative in this area.

The Commission agrees with the Honourable Member that the linguistic diversity of the forthcoming enlargement will put pressure on mother tongue teaching in the European Schools. The criteria established by the Board of Governors in October 2002 relating to numbers of pupils necessary to open a new language section justify the opening of Polish, Hungarian and Czech sections in Brussels and Luxembourg as of September 2004. However, the European Schools are recruiting both full-time and part-time teachers to provide mother tongue teaching to children of EU staff of other nationalities who are without a language section.