site.btaThe Socialists Are the Big Winners in Luxembourg, Luxembourgian Journalist Says

Looking at the results of the June 9 European elections from the Luxembourg perspective, one might be tempted to see a confirmation of this European trend of voting more right-wing. The ADR, Luxembourg's most right-wing mainstream party has gained, in fact, one seat, their first seat, in those elections, Misch Pautsch, a journalist at Lëtzebuerger Journal, told BTA after his country voted to elect its representatives to the EP. "However, when looking at those numbers and those seats in a little bit more detail, one might discover that there are some trends that seem to run counter to this. Mostly the fact that the ADR, which, in terms of seats, has been the big winner of this election, has not necessarily gained more of a voter share," he argues.

He explains this with the fact that Luxembourg only elects 6 representatives in the EP, which is quite a small number, which means that even quite large changes in voting behaviour do not necessarily translate to changes in seats, and, inversely, changes in seats are not necessarily the result of large sways in voting behaviour.

The ADR, which won one seat, only gained a little bit under 2% in voting share, which is not quite a lot, while LSAP, which is Luxembourg's Socialist party, gained almost 10%. However, those 10% did not translate to a seat, the journalist further says.

"Where there are winners, there has to be losers. Which, in our case, are the Green party, which seem to be confirming their downward spiral that they started during the parliamentary elections last year."

While the Greens did in fact lose around 9%, this did not translate to a loss of seat and they retained their one seat from the previous mandate.

He also said, "While looking at the numbers of seats this it might seem to indicate that this European right-wing trend has also arrived in Luxembourg, looking at the numbers most specifically and the percentages, one can see that the evolution has, in fact, been just the opposite, with the socialist party being the biggest winners of this election. I think this lack of swing to the right can mostly be explained by the Luxembourgish not only having the right to vote, but the obligation to vote, which, historically - and we can see this today as well - has prevented large sudden populist movements from popping up, since our voting participation is always well into the 80’s, which makes it impossible to suddenly activate sleeping or inactive voting bases, which we are seeing in many other countries, which also makes it almost impossible to lose large number of the population to voting fatigue, which we are also seeing in many other countries, which can also be explained by many facts."

As for what troubles the Luxembourgish voter, Misch Pautsch believes it is more or less the same issues seen elsewhere in Europe in general. "With a large focus on the cost-of-living crisis, which I think, in Luxembourg very specifically has turned into a housing crisis. The housing market in Luxembourg is one of the biggest political hot topics and issues that we are seeing today. It has been developing for quite some time. On a national level we are seeing some attempts at fixing the issues, although results still are somewhat up in the air. Obviously, defence has been an issue as well, but interestingly not that important in the grand scheme."