Thanks to ‘JDF’ for taking the time to post a comment – and for asking about the elite European Schools for the sons and daughters of eurocrats, which I mentioned in the previous post about the luxurious lives of the European Commission staff. This will fill you in a bit:

The schools are located in the most fashionable neighbourhoods of Brussels, Frankfurt, Luxembourg and other cities across the Continent where there are significant numbers of eurocrats, and at Culham in Oxfordshire (which is being wound-down as a European School and turned into an academy).

The schools offer an aggressively ‘European’ education from nursery level through secondary level, meant to produce children who are – and this is their founding mission statement -- ‘in mind Europeans, schooled and ready to complete and consolidate the work of their fathers before them, to bring into being a united and thriving Europe.’

In fact, these superior multi-lingual international schools are producing a caste of taxpayer-funded euro-elite who will grow up with connections and networking skills denied to other children. The picture above, from the schools' website, is of the European School in the fashionable Brussels suburb of Uccle. Draw your own conclusions.

One ‘old boys’ organisation for the European Schools actually has bragged that its objectives are to ‘create contacts’ and ‘expand a worldwide network’ across Europe and around the world, based on ‘a past history in the European School.’ And, No, your kids can’t join the network – even though your taxes pay for the schools.

The 14 ‘European Schools’ run on a £237m annual budget. These elite multilingual academies were founded in 1953 to give guaranteed free places worth up to £13,000 a year to the sons and daughters of already highly-privileged, low-taxed EU officials.

You will not be surprised to hear that British taxpayers are being forced to spend more than £25m a year in subsidies for these exclusive free schools for the children of the European Union elite.

Selection of the nearly 22,780 pupils is based entirely on their parents’ connections in the EU. Children hoping to go to one of the schools are divided into divisions based on family status.

The most privileged class is called Category I. A child is Category I if one of his parents is on the staff of an EU institution or is a national expert seconded by an EU institution or is an official attached to one of the Permanent Representations to the EU. (These are the national embassies which negotiate in Brussels at European Council level.)

Because all Category I children are guaranteed a place, the four schools in Brussels are already at full capacity and a fifth taxpayer-funded school is being planned to meet the demand. Well over 90 percent of the children at the Brussels European Schools are the Category I sons and daughters of top eurocrats. For local Belgians, entrance to the school is a privilege which their children can never enjoy. Yet the European Commission insists the schools are ‘public’ – in the American sense -- like any other state school in any EU member state, and not private.

Category II children have parents who work for one of the international organisations such as Nato which pay fees to the European Schools. Category III children have parents who have no connection with the EU but are willing to pay up to £13,000 a year to secure a place. Category III children have no hope of admission until demand by higher-category children has been met.

Britain pays a disproportionately high amount of the cost of these exclusive schools, because of the insistence by the schools that only native English-speaking teachers be used to instruct the European children in English language classes. The UK Government must meet the cost of paying 247 British teachers and management staff who have been seconded from British schools, even though they are working abroad and teaching foreign children.

When I talked to Stephen Booth of Open Europe about this some months ago, he said: ‘It is completely unreasonable to expect British taxpayers to foot the bill to educate privately EU officials’ children. Why should the sons and daughters of well-paid EU bureaucrats be granted privileges that the majority of UK taxpayers cannot afford for their own children?’

Nigel Farage, MEP and leader of UKIP said: ‘The schools of highly paid Eurocrats have the very best facilities while the average child in Britain has to do with much less. Our money should not be wasted on the free education and salubrious facilities of well-paid untaxed bureaucrats. The EU is a racket run for the benefit of the pencil-pushers.’

And for the benefit of their sons and daughters -- not your sons and daughters.