The Luxembourg housing allowance is finally there! If you are eligible, then you should see it in your payslip for July 2025, under the code “LUX”. We will not repeat the detailed conditions that you must fulfil to receive it: you can look them up Staff Centre.

If you think that you should receive the allowance, please check first your private address and your family composition in Sysper and update if needed. PMO uses this data to determine your eligibility each and every month for the duration of this exceptional time-limited allowance. 

One important aspect: if you are no longer eligible for the allowance after a promotion in November of the year, then PMO will not recover the amount that you will have received between January and November of said year (phew!). 

Following questions already received from colleagues, the following rules seem to apply to specific situations: 

Parental leave
If you are entitled to the allowance, but you switch to a 100% parental leave, then you are no longer entitled to it, for the duration of this 100% parental leave (but it’s not clear whether this pauses the timer on the allowance expiry date). We shall refrain from commenting on this 🤬. On the other hand, if you go for a 50% parental leave, then you will continue to receive the housing allowance in full. Please subscribe to the course “Logic in the EU institutions for beginners”, available soon in EU-Learn, to understand this – we here in Generation 2004 shall equally subscribe to this course, because we also fail to comprehend this.  

Part-time
If you work part-time, you will still receive the full amount of the allowance, similar to the case of 50% parental leave.  

Married couples[1] where both are working for the EU Institutions
The entitlement is considered for the couple, not each staff member individually. The allowance is paid to the spouse with the lower salary (which makes sense, since the allowance is then higher). This is different from the household allowance, which is usually paid to the spouse with the higher salary (which again makes sense, since the allowance is then higher).  

Change of eligibility
PMO will check each month the eligibility, based on the data in Sysper. Therefore it is important (not just for this allowance) that you keep your Sysper file updated. This applies not only to changes of addresses, but also your family situation.

• a move across the border to live in France, Germany or Belgium removes entitlement to this allowance since it is based on where you live, not where you work.
• getting married results in being assessed as a couple, not as an individual.
• lone parents are automatically entitled to this allowance.

Check out the HR FAQ Housing allowance – Luxembourg.

Generation 2004 considers this particular format of a housing allowance to be a short-term, temporary and imperfect ‘fix’ to a long-standing problem. Nevertheless, we have been proposing a more permanent version of a housing allowance since at least 2019.

Context

The recognised interinstitutional difficulties in recruiting (and retaining) staff in Luxembourg (‘attractiveness of the site‘ or ‘attractivity problem’), is closely related to the cost of living in Luxembourg. The Heads of Administration (Chefs d’Administration) of EU institutions and bodies based in Luxembourg announced their 12 CALux actions in March 2022, and housing appears twice on that list (points 5 and 6)[2]. To date there is no published report detailing any specific, tangible progress on any of the 12 points. The Luxembourg state has made financial assistance available for those renting too.

An additional difficulty, which Generation 2004 would add as a 13th point on that 12-point list is that of hospital overcharging[3], where again, we’d like to see published figures on the promised progress. We were disappointed to see clauses included in recent competitions insisting on chaining new recruits to Luxembourg for a minimum of several years, a choice which risks making the site even less attractive!

The cost of living in Luxembourg impacts the attractiveness of the site as a place of work, so much so that the  12 CALux actions 

 As always, we would love to hear from you. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us. 

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[1]  The household allowance and survivor’s pension are not normally available to couples who have chosen a civil partnership when they have the option to marry. Incidentally, the FAQ Housing allowance – Luxembourg suggests that couples who have only Partial partner-spouse equivalence would receive the housing allowance as individuals.

[2] Check out the state aid available for renters, which is compatible with this new housing allowance. We note that a lack of housing has been a problem in Luxembourg since at least 1920 and will not be solved overnight (Plateforme Immigration et Intégration Luxembourg (PiiLux-Asbl) round table April 2024).  Projects such as the habitat participatif (a competition where you find other people with whom to build a house) are interesting, but not enough. Affordable housing (and SNHBM) might still be out of reach for many. The impact of the use of emphyteutic leases (a long-term (normally 99-year) lease on the land) remains to be seen, but does in some way address the issue of the shortage of available land: 0.5% of people own 50% of the available land in Luxembourg.

[3] RCAM/JSIS members are charged more for services in Luxembourg than users of the national system. The overcharging was previously set at 15% but this was overturned in court, leaving the overcharge undefined. So far this has resulted in an increase in the administrative burden and uncertainty for colleagues undergoing non-emergency care since they are strongly recommended to first request an estimate (yes, like for work on a car) and submit it to the JSIS who then decide whether the price is acceptable (see ‘special rules: Luxembourg‘. Please consult the Luxembourg CHL price list before paying any medical bill.  If you believe there may be overcharging involved, consult the PMO before paying the bill. Note also that the JSIS has limitations (‘ceilings’) for reimbursement, so you might be reimbursed well below 85% of what you paid. Check out the list here, starting on p. 15.