The June 2024 Luxembourg Times article EU staff in Luxembourg to receive 500 € monthly housing allowance has now finally been confirmed: check the LSC minutes point 5, and the 26.02.2025 Central Staff Committee opinion (based on input from all OSPs). To summarise: staff up to grade AD/AST 5 step 5 will receive this allowance for a maximum period of 4 years, the sum is progressively reduced according to grade and available to those resident within the Grand Duchy only.
We here at Generation 2004 we still have unanswered questions; why grade 5(5)? Why 4 years? How to address the gaps e.g. are our addresses to be checked every month to confirm we’re still eligible, will anything be done to address dual income households gets the allowance but single-income households missing out or what happens to those receiving an invalidity allowance.
A bit of history
For some context, Generation 2004 has been proposing a housing allowance for several years, given the known issues with the very high cost of living in Luxembourg and easily seeing which members of staff are more likely to experience difficulties. Consequently, we were pleased to see housing appear twice on the 2022 CALux list of 12 actions to improve the recruitment and retention statistics for Luxembourg (’attractivity’): in fact we were rather intrigued at the fact that those 2 actions are the very same as those we put forward in 2019. Unfortunately, more than 2 years on, this allowance is little to show for the work done and we do not believe it will have any significant impact on the recruitment and retention of staff in Luxembourg (the ‘attractivity problem’). We note the lack of measurable output on the remaining 10 CALux action points. We are watching to see what new competitions might reveal with regards to the recent Luxembourg clause obliging those taking up posts in Luxembourg to remain there for a minimum number of years.
For all staff assigned to Luxembourg or only those staff living in Luxembourg?
However, we are quite clear that we still insist that any housing allowance should apply to all staff assigned to Luxembourg, no matter where they live. What we have with this housing allowance as announced is that colleagues who live at an inconvenient distance from their place of employment (rarely done by choice) still receive not one euro more. This risks cristalising a situation where staff who find themselves lower on the salary scales and living outside Luxembourg are never able to make the leap to living within the country. In spite of state assistance[***] living in Luxembourg continues to remain out of reach for many.
If you move 30 km away from the BECH building (Kirchberg, home of Eurostat, the force behind the yearly salary updates), you are in most cases already outside the country of Luxembourg. Don’t believe it? Look for yourself: on the linked map, the entire border of the 30km circle below the line established by connecting Trier (Germany) and Habay (Belgium) is outside the Luxembourg national border[****]. Lower housing costs there have nothing to do with them being bordering regions, but everything to do with the simple fact that housing costs are lower the further away you get from a city centre. This is not a particularity of Luxembourg: it applies to every city, even to Brussels. How many colleagues in Brussels live 30 km away from their place of employment? For Luxembourg this appears to be a desperate attempt to come up with some sort of excuse to spend as little as possible while still being able to claim that they tried to remedy a long-standing problem.
Where we stand
We believe that what is here is a start. Not a good start, not an auspicious start, but a start nonetheless. It shows that it is possible, but it does not go far enough and is not sufficient to make address the issue it is intended to address: staff retention in Luxembourg. We firmly believe that no colleague loves to spend hours each day in traffic jams, just because the Luxembourgish landscape is so beautiful. Where we draw the line is then is always subject to discussion, but if that residence is sufficiently close to be authorised for telework why should it then be judged too far away to qualify for a housing allowance? We are unable to find any payment based on physical address and not the place of work. Will it cost more to administer than it pays out in allowances?
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[*] Minimum wage in Luxembourg for Contract Agents – Parliament shows the way and the monthly €40 lump sum contribution to working-from-home costs for Parliament staff paid from April 2020
[**] The Luxembourg Times puts it at 14000 in 2023, but it’s not possible to see the source for that figure.
[***] Luxembourg changed the law 10.07.2024 to improve the rights of tenants e.g. size of deposit (now equal to 2 months of rent, not 3) who pays for agency fees (no longer 100% tenant) and the return of the deposit. Nevertheless, much of what is labeled ‘affordable’ housing (rent or purchase) remains far from affordable.
RTL, Affordable housing is no longer selling in Luxembourg 19.05.2024
Virgule, Quand les logements, même abordables, ne trouvent pas preneur, 10.04.2024
[****] For this reason, a Luxembourg-based colleague might telework from another country without using up their 10 teleworking from anywhere days: that colleague might be only 30 km from work and living just across the border in Germany. So, no, Luxembourg-based colleagues do not have more TWA days, they are just doing their best to get by. For comparison, Brussels-based staff can have a partial reimbursement of their transport costs up to a 60km maximum distance.
