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Luxembourg’s ADR party has renewed criticism of the Education Minister and the coalition’s budget plans, claiming the country’s rapid population growth is eroding infrastructure, affordability, and national identity.
At a press conference on Thursday morning ahead of next week's parliamentary session, the ADR honed in on education minister Claude Meisch's policies, as well as criticising the budget alignment.
"We must stop Mr Meisch's policies," the party said.
The budget motto is "growing together". In 2000, Jean-Claude Juncker warned the population could increase to 700,000 – in 2025, the Grand Duchy can boast 680,000 residents. The ADR expressed no understanding of how this could be allowed to pass, declaring the country's problems all stem from extreme population growth.
Parliamentary group leader Fred Keup said: "The first issue is housing. More people, more expensive properties. The next issue is traffic: more people, more cars, more traffic. Then of course we have the disappearance of our identity, our culture, our language. Our nature is disappearing under concrete. In 1990 5% of the country was built up, now it's 15%. We have growth, which produces wealth, but then we have so many people in the country who are struggling, who are poor in spite of our economic growth. They are suffering doubly as a result. There's a lack of infrastructure, not enough hospitals, schools or roads."
A recent Ilres survey showed the CSV would lose four seats if elections were held next Sunday, two of which would go to the ADR. Although Keup expressed caution when heeding polls, he explained the voter migration as follows:
"Whether it's family policies or language, people are realising the CSV is not what it once was. They are abandoning their policy programme of 30 or 40 years [...] Then it's normal for people to say they won't vote for them anymore. We are a natural alternative. I think we are the only non-leftwing party in the Chamber nowadays."
The policies currently being implemented by the Ministry of Education are particularly offensive to the ADR.
"We must stop Claude Meisch. He is in the process of destroying our school system as we know it. Our society model is based on our school system, that's where integration happens, where languages are learned, and now that is being turned upside down. With more French in pre-school, in the nurseries, in apprenticeships, French everywhere. International schools are replacing our secondary schools. Now the literacy programme in French will lead us to lose our multilingual abilities, we will lose German, in the end we will also lose Luxembourgish. This policy is Francisation and it must be stopped."
The ADR has appealed to other parties and to the public to put pressure on the government. Keup said there should be advantages to speaking Luxembourgish, instead of disadvantages.
The party is also proposing an increase of the number of MPs in the Chamber of Deputies, stating the amount of work was increasing and the number of ministers had risen in recent years, meaning the balance between executive and legislative branches was disproportionate.
