How Luxembourg rewrote its constitution without asking its voters

Why Luxembourg revised its constitution in pieces

The constitution in force is still dated 17 October 1868. Luxembourg has never replaced it, only revised it, and the largest of those revisions took effect on 1 July 2023 as an amended version of the same document rather than as a new one. A first constitution was drafted in 1841, two years after independence was settled by the Treaty of London of 19 April 1839, and every constitutional change since has been an edit to a text already on the shelf.

The rewrite began in 2009, when the deputy Paul-Henri Meyers tabled proposal 6030 for a wholly new constitution, the product of committee work going back to 2005. The committee then spent nine more years on it. A consensus was reached in June 2018 and came apart almost at once.

What the parties agreed on instead was a procedure. The status quo was ruled out, the existing text would be revised chapter by chapter in an order the committee set, and a provisional list of changes commanding broad agreement was fixed first. Four proposals followed, tabled in 2020 and 2021 by four co-rapporteurs drawn from four parties: Léon Gloden of the CSV, Mars Di Bartolomeo of the LSAP, Simone Beissel of the DP and Charles Margue of déi gréng.

Revision takes two votes at least three months apart, each carried by two thirds of the deputies present, and proxy votes are not accepted, which is why attendance was recorded on each occasion. The first votes were taken between October 2021 and July 2022. Either second vote could have been replaced by a referendum, had a quarter of the deputies or 25,000 voters demanded one. No such demand was made, and the four chapters were confirmed on 21 and 22 December 2022.

The ADR voted against all four chapters and déi Lénk abstained on all four, which left the governing majority and the CSV carrying the revision between them. A rival text had existed: déi Lénk tabled its own revision in February 2016, proposing a republic and the vote for foreigners resident five years, and the Chamber rejected it.

What the revised text added runs long. The Luxembourgish language, the flag, the coat of arms and the national anthem are now written into the constitution, as is a statement that the Grand Duchy takes part in European integration, and as are the right to housing, the right to work, the safeguarding of biodiversity, the protection of cultural heritage, the recognition of animals as sentient living beings, the interest of the child and the protection of personal data. A committee of inquiry can now be forced by a third of the deputies, twenty of them, where it previously took thirty-one. Motions of confidence and censure appear for the first time.

Who is allowed to vote in legislative elections

Citizens were consulted during the revision in two very different ways. Between July 2015 and July 2016 a website took proposals from the public, and 139 citizens and associations filed one; the rights of the child, social dialogue and access to culture entered the constitutional text out of that process.

The other consultation was a referendum, and it ran the other way. On 7 June 2015 voters were put three questions: whether residents without Luxembourgish nationality should vote in legislative elections, whether voting should be open on an optional basis from the age of sixteen, and whether a limit should be set on how long a person may sit in government. All three were refused.

The Chamber then respected the result in the rest of its work. The revised constitution keeps the principle that the right to vote may be extended by law to non-Luxembourgers, and specifies that the principle does not apply to legislative elections. A closed door was written into the text by a vote, in a country whose resident population is close to half foreign.

The proportions are these. In 2025 there were 681,973 permanent residents, of whom 47% held foreign nationality: the Portuguese at 13.2%, the French at 7.2%, the Italians at 3.7%, the Belgians at 2.7% and the Germans at 1.8%, with a further 7.2% from elsewhere in the European Union and 10.7% from beyond it. The population passed 693,916 in 2026 and is growing fast. Britannica attributes the composition to a chronic labour shortage and a low birth rate among Luxembourgers rather than to any policy of recruitment.

The workforce is more foreign still, because a large part of it sleeps in another country and pays its taxes in the Grand Duchy.

The franchise has been widened before, and always by revision rather than by ballot. Before 1919 the vote was conditional on a poll tax and restricted to men of twenty-five and over. The revision of 1919 gave it to every citizen of either sex aged twenty-one and enshrined national sovereignty at the same time, and in 1972 the age came down to eighteen. The Chamber decided each of those enlargements on its own authority. The one enlargement ever put to the electorate is the one that failed.

How the Chamber of Deputies came to matter

Under the constitution of 1841 the assembly of the estates had thirty-four deputies, took no decisions, sat in secret and advised the sovereign. Only the Grand Duke could propose a law.

The year 1848 changed that in a single step, in a climate set by the revolutionary movements in France. The new constitution created a constitutional monarchy in which the King Grand Duke held only the powers the constitution and the special laws gave him. Legislative power passed to the parliament, which gained the right to propose and amend laws, control of the budget and the power of inquiry, and the sessions became public.

It lasted eight years. In 1853 William III asked his government to draft a constitution limiting the Chamber's powers, and when the Chamber refused to consider it he dissolved the government. The parliament was renamed the Assembly of the Estates, the permanent budget returned, and the Council of State was created in 1856 to keep watch on the parliament.

The compromise of 1868 settled the argument. Following the declaration of neutrality and independence in 1867, the constitution was revised into a settlement between the freedoms of 1848 and the authoritarian charter of 1856. The parliament became the Chamber of Deputies again and recovered the annual vote on budget and taxes, while the King Grand Duke went on exercising executive power and co-holding legislative power. Sovereignty passed to the nation only in 1919.

The Chamber today seats sixty members elected for five years by proportional representation in four multi-seat constituencies, North, East, Centre and South. The Grand Duke may dissolve it, and elections must follow within three months. Standing committees arrived in 1965, replacing sections whose members had been drawn by lot. Parties themselves have been funded directly by the state since January 2008, on condition of regular political activity, full candidate lists and a vote share of at least 2%.

The Chamber has also collected the bodies that check the administration: the Court of Auditors, which replaced the Chamber of Auditors in 1999, the Ombudsman, who took office in 2004 and takes instructions from no authority, and, since 2017, the children's ombudsman and the Centre for Equal Treatment, both moved out of ministerial supervision. The public petition arrived in 2014, and 4,500 signatures gathered within six weeks force a public debate broadcast on ChamberTV.

What the Council of State does to a bill

The Council of State was built to restrain a parliament, and it outlived the parliament's recovery. Its twenty-one members are appointed by the Grand Duke on proposals made in turn by the government, the Chamber and the Council itself, the heir to the throne is traditionally among them, and a councillor's term ends after twelve years or at the age of seventy-two.

Its opinion is mandatory on every piece of proposed legislation, whether the text comes from the government or from a deputy, and five professional chambers are consulted as well, covering employees, civil servants, agriculture, commerce and the trades. Bills are frequently redrafted in response: the law transposing the European whistleblower directive and the draft law implementing the citizens' legislative initiative were both amended after the Council of State reported on them.

That is a dense consultative apparatus with a narrow entrance. The European Commission's rule of law report on Luxembourg in 2023 found that outside those mandatory consultations the process is not structurally open, that submissions from civil society organisations are neither published nor answered, and that the general public appears to have no way of submitting an opinion on a draft law at all. The Commission had recommended improvement in 2022, recorded no further progress a year later, and made the same recommendation again. The government's own account of the separation of powers calls it soft.

The revision did open one door. Since 1 July 2023 a reasoned proposal for the purposes of legislating may be introduced by 125 electors, and where 12,500 voters support it the Chamber must decide on it in public session.

What the grand duke can no longer do

Executive power belongs to the Grand Duke jointly with the government, and in practice the government exercises it while the head of state ensures that laws are carried out and represents the Grand Duchy abroad. The prime minister and the ministers are appointed by the monarch after the elections, and every member of the government answers to the Chamber. The crown is hereditary in the Nassau-Weilburg family under absolute primogeniture, and Grand Duke Guillaume V holds it, the only sovereign grand duke anywhere.

The office has been redefined twice in recent memory, and both times by the Chamber rather than by the palace. In 2008 a bitter controversy over euthanasia arose when the Grand Duke opposed the bill on grounds of personal Christian conscience, and parliament answered by passing a measure restricting his legislative veto.

The second redefinition came with the revision. Accession, abdication and regency are now detailed in the constitution, and every reference to the Nassau family pact was struck out, so the rules of succession rest on a public constitutional text instead of on an eighteenth-century dynastic agreement.

One power ran the other way. A constitutional amendment of October 2017 created a state of emergency under which the Grand Duke may take measures derogating from existing laws where the Chamber cannot legislate in time. It was invoked for the first time on 17 March 2020, when Prime Minister Xavier Bettel declared one.

The monarchy itself has been to the ballot box once. Marie-Adélaïde abdicated in favour of her sister Charlotte in January 1919 after a company of the army rebelled and declared itself the army of a new republic, and in the referendum held later that year 77.8% voted to keep the dynasty. Sovereignty has resided with the nation since.

Which parties have held power since the war

Since the end of the Second World War the Christian Social People's Party has been the senior partner in every governing coalition but two: a DP and LSAP government from 1974 to 1979, and the DP, LSAP and Green coalition from 2013 to 2023. Fifty-five years of first place out of seventy is the central fact of Luxembourgish party politics, and it belongs to a Catholic-oriented party that runs second in the regions where it does not run first.

The rest hold defined ground. The DP is social-liberal, drawing on the self-employed, the business community and the urban upper middle class, strongly pro-NATO and committed to a secular state; its stronghold is the City of Luxembourg, whose mayor usually comes from its ranks. The LSAP is social-democratic and strongest in the industrial south, the Minette region around the canton of Esch. The Greens, formed in 1983, have generally opposed the country's military policy including NATO membership, and the ADR is national conservative, softly eurosceptic and campaigns hardest for the preservation and use of Luxembourgish. déi Lénk has held two seats since 2013, and the Pirate Party, formed in October 2009, won its first two in 2018 on 6.45%. The Communist Party took between 10% and 18% from the war to the 1960s and lost its last seat in 2004.

Governments are assembled after elections rather than chosen at them. Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister since 1995, resigned in July 2013 after a parliamentary inquiry into the state intelligence service exposed illegal wiretapping and concluded that he bore political responsibility for it, and the LSAP walked out of his coalition. The snap election of 20 October 2013 left the CSV largest with 23 seats and produced a government without it, as Xavier Bettel assembled liberals, social democrats and Greens holding 32 of the 60 seats. He was sworn in that December and again in December 2018. In October 2023 the CSV won back first place, Luc Frieden became prime minister in November in coalition with the DP, and Bettel stayed in government as deputy prime minister and foreign minister.

Luxembourgish politicians have a second career track that few countries can offer. Gaston Thorn, Jacques Santer and Juncker all left the prime minister's office for the presidency of the European Commission, Juncker taking it on 1 November 2014.

How Luxembourg guards its own rule of law

Jurisdiction runs in two branches, a judicial one handling civil disputes, criminal matters and disputes over political rights, and an administrative one ruling on disputes with the authorities. A Constitutional Court decides whether laws conform to the constitution. The Superior Court of Justice, containing the Court of Appeal and the Court of Cassation, sits above two district tribunals and three justices of the peace at Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg and Diekirch. The civil law rests on the Code Civil introduced under French rule in 1804.

The justice chapter of the revision built a new body. The National Council for Justice selects magistrates before their appointment by the Grand Duke and decides on the opening of disciplinary proceedings against them. The same chapter strengthened the independence of the Prosecutor's Office and abolished the Chamber's exclusive right to bring charges against members of the government, handing the power to prosecute a minister for acts committed in office to prosecutors instead. A law of 3 March 2023 covered the gap until the constitutional provision took effect that July.

The measurements are good and the gaps are specific. Court independence was rated fairly or very good in 2023 by 76% among the general public and 74% among companies, against 73% for the public in 2016. Luxembourg scored 77 out of 100 on Transparency International's 2022 corruption perceptions index, sixth in the European Union and tenth in the world, and its World Bank governance scores for 2024 put rule of law at 87.3. Against that, the reform meant to make legal aid more accessible was still pending in 2023, and the transparency register covering lobbying of the Chamber is operational but minimal in structure and implementation.

Why neutrality ended and Europe moved in

Neutrality was never a Luxembourgish choice. The first Treaty of London established it in 1839, and the second, signed on 11 May 1867 after the Luxembourg Crisis brought Prussia and France close to war over the fortress, reaffirmed it and added guarantors among the great powers. The price was written into the same treaty. The westward and underground fortifications of Luxembourg City, the works that had earned the place the name Gibraltar of the North, were to be demolished and never rebuilt, and the Prussian garrison stationed there since 1815 was to withdraw. Dismantling took sixteen years and destroyed more than 24 kilometres of underground defences.

The guarantee held once and failed twice. It was respected during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, violated by Germany in August 1914 and violated again on 10 May 1940. The post-war Chamber drew the conclusion and revised the constitution to repeal the neutral status, which formally ended in 1948, the year Luxembourg signed the Brussels Treaty. In April 1949 it was a founding member of NATO, having been a founding member of the United Nations in 1945.

What followed was a decision to be indispensable rather than invisible. On the night of 24 to 25 July 1952, after eighteen hours of negotiation, the foreign minister Joseph Bech proposed that the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community begin work in Luxembourg. It stayed until the executives merged in 1968, and the judicial and financial institutions never left. The Court of Justice of the European Union has been in the country since 1952 and on the Kirchberg plateau since 1973, alongside the European Court of Auditors, the European Investment Bank, the European Stability Mechanism, Eurostat and the Secretariat-General of the European Parliament. The Council of the European Union holds its sessions in the Grand Duchy every April, June and October, and more than 14,000 people work in the European institutions in a country of fewer than seven hundred thousand.

The rest of the alignment is of a piece. Luxembourg formed an economic union with Belgium in 1921, joined the Benelux customs union in 1948, gave its name and a Moselle village to the Schengen agreements, and joined the eurozone in 1999. Participation in European integration is now a clause of the constitution rather than a matter of policy.

That constitution has not stopped moving. In 2026, three years after the revised text came into force, Luxembourg became the second country in the world after France to write access to abortion into it. The method is unchanged: two votes, three months apart, and two thirds of the deputies present. Luxembourg: history deals with how the state that uses this method came to exist, and Luxembourg: overview what it looks like now.