Friday, July 12, 2013

Grand Duke to Announce New Elections

In case you are following any news related to the Grand Duchy apart from the Grand Ducal Family, you are probaby all too aware that Luxembourg's government has been in crisis for a few weeks now. A while ago, the Hereditary Grand Duke and Hereditary Grand Duchess alongside the minister for foreign affairs and the economy even cancelled a trade mission to Switzerland due to censure motions against one minister in particular and the government in general.

All the problems are related to the scandals surrounding Luxembourg's secret service and  Bommeleeër case. In addition to the already discussed illegal wire-tapping, there have also been allegations of corruption and even a dodgy trade in luxury cars for private gain within the SREL as well as the existence of 13,000 secret files on people and businesses.

Prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker was accused of being responsible for the mismanagement of the Luxembourg secret service during his time as head of the government and also often omitting to inform the parliamentary control committee or the judiciary of its irregularities, aberrations and illegalities. The prime minister has denied those claims and had no intentions of resigning himself.
After hours of parliamentary debates yesterday and the Luxembourg Socialist Workers' Party (LSAP), one of the coalition parties, withdrawing their trust from prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker of the Christian Social People's Party (CSV), the prime minister had announced to ask the Grand Duke as head of state for new elections.

In the early afternoon hours of today, Juncker made his announcement come true when he made the very short way to the palais grand-ducal to meet with Grand Duke Henri and ask him for the dissolution of the parliament. The Grand Duke has not made a decision yet but asked for time to consider.  He is expected to conduct a series of consultation with representatives of Luxembourg's parties before announcing new elections.

The Luxembourgish constitution states that within 90 days after the dissolution of the parliament, there need to be new elections. At the moment, it seems most likely that the parliament will be dissolved on October 8 and elections conducted twelve days later. Until then, the government will stay intact but is unable to pass laws or make any other decisions which necessitate a vote in the Chamber of Deputies. Prime minister Juncker has already been nominated as his party's leading candidate during the evening hours.


Sources: Wort

2 comments:

  1. Looks like a typo in the last paragraph: "within 90 years after the dissolution of parliament"

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  2. Oh yes, thank you! 90 years would be a little long so it's indeed 90 days.

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