Board wants ‘suitable’ spot for school

The board of governors of the European schools is asking the Belgian government to find another site for a temporary school in Brussels, after concluding that the site proposed is too far away from a planned permanent school.

A fourth European School is to open in Laeken, on the north side of Brussels, but it will not be ready until 2009 at the earliest. In the meantime, overcrowding at the existing three schools necessitates setting up the school on a temporary site, but parents have protested at Belgium’s offer of a site at Berkendael, near Forest, on the opposite side of the city from Laeken.

After meeting in Brussels yesterday (27 September), the board gave the Belgian authorities until the end of next month to come up with an alternative to Berkendael, when it will meet again and consider both sites.

The temporary site must be ready to take in pupils from September next year when the overcrowding problem will become acute. "The Belgian authorities should as a matter of urgency…make an offer of another site at a location reasonably close to Laeken," the board said in a statement.

Parents, led by an alliance of unions representing staff in the EU institutions, held a rally outside the governors’ meeting. The board is made up of representatives from the EU member states and the European Commission.

"The temporary school’s location and the fact that they’re not sure if there are enough places is not acceptable," said David Taylor, a parent and political secretary of the union, the Syndicat des Fonctionnaires Européens. "We want a solution but on the other hand not at any price."

Günter Lorenz, vice-president of the parents’ association for the Woluwe school, said parents would not send their children to Berkendael if this option was forced on them. "It’s death by starvation but maybe this is the only way we can do it," he said.

The European schools were set up to instruct the children of EU officials in their national languages and culture and are located in various member states with a concentration in Brussels and Luxembourg.

The board of governors of the European schools is asking the Belgian government to find another site for a temporary school in Brussels, after concluding that the site proposed is too far away from a planned permanent school.