After the parliamentary elections in Luxembourg, the Christian Social People’s Party (CSV) and the Democratic Party (DP) want to start talks to form a coalition. Both parties announced this after their national executive committees met on Monday evening. The decisions were made unanimously.
If the coalition negotiations are successful, the alliance would have a strong majority with 35 out of 60 seats in parliament, said CSV top candidate Luc Frieden, who was commissioned by the Grand Duke of Luxembourg to form a government. His party emerged as the strongest party in Sunday’s election – it won 21 seats. The DP came to 14.
The three-party coalition of Liberals, Greens and Social Democrats, which has been in power since the end of 2013 and led by Prime Minister Xavier Bettel (DP), was voted out due to the Greens’ bitter losses.
Frieden said that a coalition with the DP would see “programmatic coherence.” There will be no parallel negotiations with the Social Democrats, with whom a majority in the Chamber of Deputies would also be mathematically possible.
The DP announced that Bettel would lead the coalition talks for the party as a negotiator. The Liberals gained the most of the major parties (plus two seats). The voters gave the DP “a clear mandate to continue to assume responsibility” for the country.
The CSV is now returning to government after ten years in opposition. The lawyer Frieden (60) is known in Luxembourg as a former, experienced, long-standing minister. From 1998 to 2013, he was responsible, among other things, for justice and defense in the cabinet of then Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, and most recently for the finance department.
Election results
