Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-25-Speech-4-232"
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"en.20080925.22.4-232"2
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"Madam President, several very serious and important issues have been raised.
So this is the overall picture, and I must just repeat that the Commission’s attitude is that we must bring clarity to the financial issues and clearly share the burden, have clear responsibilities, clear obligations, and then we can also find better solutions to the infrastructure questions, but we cannot have any kind of reduction in the quality of education.
About some specific questions, one honourable Member raised the question about disabled students. You said that there are many more of them but I do not know that anybody has been rejected when parents have asked for special treatment: it has always been provided. So, if you have facts that there are some hidden pupils with disabilities, please provide these facts and we will deal with them.
Now, about parliamentary assistants, you know that at present parliamentary assistants are not covered by the Staff Regulations, they are a kind of special staff members in Parliament, but you know also that negotiations are ongoing to settle this and to have more precise rules, and then we can also consider what to do about access to the European Schools for the children of parliamentary assistants.
So these are more or less the questions which were raised, and of course all these questions – religious education, languages – are clearly in the hands of the Board of Governors, and the Commission is just one voice on that Board. The Board of Governors is dealing with these issues very seriously. They have held long discussions about this, and I can assure you that the Secretariat-General of the European Schools is very attentive to all needs of the different languages and different religious aspects. So this is their responsibility.
Just one thing more: if Parliament can draw Member States’ attention, and especially if all Members of the European Parliament who have their own connections in their home countries can encourage the Member States’ Ministers of Education, to promote this idea of the European Baccalaureate because this is their choice. We now have rules on how to go ahead with the European Baccalaureate. Now it is up to the national ministries to find interested schools. I know that there are a lot of interested schools, but the national authorities in many countries have not shown enough enthusiasm about this project, which can be a step forward and which can really then be a positive mark for the European Baccalaureate, so we can have European Schools not only in Brussels but everywhere – in new Member States and old Member States. This is a symbol of Europe. The Baccalaureate and European education is one element in our architecture.
First of all I would like to remind you that the European Schools system is a completely independent body. It is based not on the Treaty of 1958 but on the Statute of 1953, it has its own Board, its own Statute, and all rules are adopted by this Board. The Commission is only one voice on the Board.
As for the content of the education, this is fully the responsibility of the Board, and all this, including the different proportions between the language sections, and the curriculum, is totally in the hands of the Board of Governors of the European Schools. So the Commission has not very much to say.
As to financing, this is the second thing I would like to say in reply to one important question. The infrastructure is provided by the host countries. So the schools are built by Belgium, Germany, France etc. This gives us the full picture of the limits we have in developing the infrastructure.
What about the content of education? The honourable Member mentioned in her introductory remarks that the quality of the education is high – and it is high. This is one of the main priorities of the European Commission, to give every possible support so that this quality will be high. This will really be a benchmark for European educational systems, that European Schools give pupils an education which is highly appreciated everywhere. So I do not have any information that pupils with a European School education have any specific difficulties in getting to university after school if they so wish.
Concerning teachers, they count as part of the infrastructure, so teachers are also provided by Member States. English teachers, for example, are provided by the United Kingdom; in other words, the burden for bigger languages is correspondingly much higher. We, the Commission – or the European budget – pay the operational costs for this. This gives us a combination that results in a rather cumbersome system, and one objective is therefore to reform the system and to bring more clarity to responsibility and financing. You can also see the problems with Belgium, where, it has been said, one of the four schools is still a temporary school. The construction of the fourth school has been postponed and postponed, and we are in intensive discussions with the Belgian Government about this.
On the openness of European schools, in our view the key issue is the European Baccalaureate, and the certification of schools which want to award the European Baccalaureate. We promote this idea, which has basically been adopted by the Board of Governors, so the basic rules exist. Now the question is how to put this into practice in the Member States. Again, the leading role lies with the Member States. So this will to some extent settle the problem of different pupils.
Today, as I said, I am meeting Parliament and I hear your observations that category III is something which must be excluded, but I also regularly meet our staff – it is the same size, comprising hundreds of people – and they of course have a clear demand, namely that education for their children must be guaranteed.
So there is a requirement – and this is emphasised very strongly in the Treaty, in the Staff Regulations, in the regulation – to provide places in the schools and then, of course, the question arises who will distribute these other places which are to remain free and definitely in Brussels? This is more and more difficult. This is for me a very complicated question. At the beginning of this Commission, we insisted on behalf of our staff that there must be more clarity, and so the Central Enrolment Authority has been established by the Board of Governors to settle these questions."@en1
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