In a statement published by the association ‘Au-delà des frontières’ (‘Beyond the borders’), several German and French elected officials demand that the Grand Duchy revise its fiscal policies.
To compensate for the presence of 53,000 German and 117,000 French border workers commuting to Luxembourg on a daily basis, whose taxes go “entirely” to Luxembourg, they call for an “adaptation of the agreements between Germany, France, and the Grand Duchy”.
The proposed change would take the form of a “tax compensation by the Luxembourg government” following the model “already in place between Belgium and the Grand Duchy or between France and Switzerland”. These agreements amount to €48 million and €326 million per year, respectively.
The elected representatives, including MPs, regional councilors, and mayors from Lorraine, consider this compensation urgent and indispensable to “create the conditions for a veritable European development at Luxembourg’s borders”.
Read also: All there is to know about teleworking in Luxembourg in 2023According to their calculations, which have been based on agreements between France and Switzerland, France would recover between €192 and €247 million euros annually. Germany would make between €100 and €128 million.
At the local level, this would represent between €8 and €10.5 million for the city of Thionville, €5 to €6.4 million for Metz, and €9 to €11.6 million for Trier. “Without this, the weakening of our local public services due to a lack of budgetary leeway is inevitable,” they argue.
In the short term, there is little chance that Luxembourg will be enthusiastic about the proposal. Not least because Prime Minister Xavier Bettel has always found the words to brush aside the subject by focusing on the co-development of useful infrastructure for border workers.
