This is a letter to Maria de Macado CLP COMM and was written 9 years ago.

Please note that the reference to Parents Association Management, refers to the people who had been in place at the top of the APEEE, just before 2003, not the current President or Management Committee.

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Dear Maria,

I am writing this letter to ask the Commission Local Staff Committee to urgently organise a general assembly of officials to discuss the options for splitting up the European school in Luxembourg. The staff committees in the European parliament and the Court of Justice have organised such meetings and they have passed resolutions asking for a horizontal split of the school, with the secondary school to be based in Mamer.

I have worked on the Equal opportunities committee in Eurostat for several years and I know for a fact that Eurostat has problems recruiting officials who pass competitions and have young children, to come and work here because the social facilities are worse than in Brussels. If they also have to drive their young children out to Mamer each morning and then collect them in the afternoon then they definitely will not come to work in the Commission in Luxembourg.

I am also a member of the management committee of the parent’s association in the school. From my contacts there I have discovered that the option of an Horizontal split was presented to the Board of Governors meeting in Shannon ( Ireland ) by a member of the Interparents association ( Helene Skikos ) and this presentation was well received. The majority of member states were quite impressed. However, the directors and inspectors were against, mainly since they will have a lot of work to do if a decision is taken to create a separate Secondary school. The many advantages to this way of splitting the school include: cost savings, easier to create classes for minority languages, easier to create a vocational option for those children not wishing to follow a classical education and go to university.

It seems to me that the school here in Luxembourg has only informed the parents about one option. It is also clear that the parent’s association never made any attempt to inform parent’s of children in the CPE, gardarie, crèche, maternelle and lower years in primary ( i.e. those who will be affected by this decision as it will take 5 years to build the school ) and get feedback from these parents, before ‘representing’ these parents on the steering committee.

Please can you ensure that this issue is raised as soon as possible at a meeting of the staff committee and that an assembly general or referendum is organised. Maybe there is a ‘hidden agenda’ here. Perhaps by splitting the school into 2 different locations, putting different nationalities against each other, putting parents against each other, the Commission, as with Mr Kinnock’s reform, intentionally wants to divide the opposition and conquer.

Best regards,

Gerard Hanney