Family life

A domestic scene showing happy children with their mother and father

If you have or are planning a family at some point in your future, you will be entitled to extra benefits such as household and child allowance, parental leave, education allowance and a contribution to annual travel expenses for expatriates and their family members.

Working in Brussels or Luxembourg will give you an added advantage: they are both family-friendly cities, have excellent national and international schools as well as childcare facilities. Among them are the European Schools that offer a multilingual and multicultural education to EU staff children.

European Schools

The European Schools are official educational establishments controlled jointly by the governments of the 27 EU Member States. They are aimed primarily at children of staff of the European institutions. The mission of the European Schools is to provide a multilingual and multicultural quality education for nursery, primary and secondary level pupils. Basic instruction is given in the official languages of the EU. This principle allows the primacy of the pupil’s native language (L1) to be safeguarded. Consequently, each school comprises several language sections. To foster the unity of the school and encourage genuine multicultural education, there is a strong emphasis on the learning, understanding and use of foreign languages.

The European Schools network is currently comprised of 13 schools with a total of about 28,300 pupils enrolled. The majority of these students are based in Brussels and Luxembourg, but the schools are also located in other Member States.

You can learn more about the objectives and principles of the European Schools and find all their locations.