According to interior minister Dan Kersch, first talks about a possible merger started a couple of months ago.

At the moment, only three of the six municipalities that are part of the so called "northern city" (Nordstad) are talking about potentially merging into one larger municipality. RTL talked to the municipalities' mayors.

The idea of a "northern city" has been floating around for almost 10 years now. An inter-communal syndicate - called Zano -, as well as a political committee are already in place. However, the six municipalities of Colmar-Berg, Schieren, Ettelbrück, Erpeldange-sur-Sûre, Diekirch and Bettendorf have so far not tackled any larger projects.

This could change soon as three of the six municipalities have since held talks about a possible merger. The municipal council of Ettelbrück met with the Erpeldange council and later went on to also talk to the Schieren council. On 12 September, the three municipal councils will take a vote on the issue.

While Colmar-Berg, Diekirch and Bettendorf did not take part in the talks, they were of course notified about the possibility. The mayor of Schieren, André Schmit, said that the goal was to get all six municipalities together and to merge into one single large municipality.

A couple of years ago, Diekirch contacted Bettendorf to pitch a possible merger to them, but these talks lead nowhere. Erpeldange-sur-Sûre lies between the two biggest municipalities in the north: Diekirch and Ettelbrück. The mayor of Erpelange points out that they would also be open to talks with Diekirch, but that Ettelbrück was just more open to talking about a possible merger. Should Ettelbrück be interested, Erpeldange would be happy to fuse together.

All municipalities agree that they would not be able to merge at the same time, but that the mergers would have to happen step-by-step. Merging six municipalities at once would cause an administrative nightmare.

Should Ettelbrück, Schieren and Erpeldange unite, the newly formed municipality would be the 8th largest in the country when it comes to the number of residents. At the moment, Ettelbrück is the largest city in the north, but ranks only 15th at national level.

Should all six municipalities ever decide to merge together, they would form a "super-municipality" with around 25,000 inhabitants. After Luxembourg City, Esch-sur-Alzette and Differdange, that would make it the fourth largest municipality in the country.