Luxembourg

Implementation processes in Luxembourg 

Main actors

National parliament(Chambre des deputés), which gathers in plenary assembly, and has committees

Government, consists of the Prime Minister and a number of ministers, which are organised in ministerial departments/units.

Political groups: a multi-party system with three strong political parties; two other moderately successful parties have emerged recently. No single party could gain power alone, and parties form coalition governments.

Council of stateissues an opinion on all government and parliament bills and draft regulations, as well as give its opinion on any other questions referred to it by the Grand Duke or by law.

There are no regional actorsin Luxembourg.

The relationship between actors

The initiative for a lawcomes from the Chamber of Deputies ("parliamentary initiative" and is exercised by the presentation of "legislative proposals") or the Government ("government initiative" and is exercised by the presentation of "bills").

Draft laws or proposals are submitted to different opinions of the bodies concerned (professional chambers), but especially to the Council of State. After receiving the opinion of the Council of State, the draft law or bill is returned to the Chamber of Deputies.

General rules for transposition

The Constitution does not contain specific provisions governing the transposition derived European standards. The normal instrument for implementing European directives is the lawadopted by the Chamber of Deputies(with simple majority).

In principle, European directives must normally be transposed into Luxembourg law by means of a law. However, recourse to formal law is not necessaryand when the directive relates to a matter already governed by Luxembourg law which is not otherwise, the transposition can be done by means of a grand-ducal regulationby the governments (more specifically, on the basis of the general power of execution of the laws which the government draws from articles 33 and 36 of the Constitution). These regulations formally become then Luxembourg law, even if the content of the regulation is actually inspired by the European directive.

Legislative and regulatory procedures

For the transposition through legislative procedure, when a directive is competences of one or several ministries, it is assigned to one of these ministries to ensure coordination in the transposition procedure (“chef de file”). The EU law is then transposed into a law through legislative procedure, and the text of the Luxembourg law is prepared by inter-ministerial working groups. Following the submission to the Council of State and receiving its positive opinion, the proposed law is object of parliamentary amendments.

The regulatory procedureallows the government to avoid these consultations with the Council of State and the Professional Chambers by invoking the urgency of adopting the recommended measure. The procedure for adopting grand-ducal regulations is characterized, like the legislative procedure, by the obligation which is made on the Government to submit its draft text to the opinion of the Council of State and the Professional Chambers.

However, the Government cannot claim the state of urgency when it intends to transpose a European directive by means of a Grand-Ducal regulation. Indeed, the law of August 9, 1971 completes the ordinary regulatory procedure by requiring, on the one hand, the compulsory consultation of the Council of State, and on the other hand, the assent of the parliamentary commission of the Chamber of Deputies.

In either case, the text of the Grand-Ducal regulation is adopted in the Council of Ministers, then signed by the Minister responsible and submitted to promulgation.

The transposition of European directives is today regulated by a specific enabling law of August 9, 1971, modified by a law of December 8, 1980, which authorities the Government to execute and sanction EU directives in a number of fields (i.e. economic, technical, agricultural, forestry, social and transport matters).

 References 

Bossaert, Danielle. (2018). Luxembourg. 10.7765/9781526137364.00021.

Government of Luxembourg (2018). Rapport sur la transposition des directives européennes et l’application du droit de l’Union 2018

European e-Justice Portal. https://e-justice.europa.eu/