Long-serving Luxembourg PM faces tough polls test

Luxembourg, one of the smallest countries in Europe but one of the richest in the world, goes to the polls on Sunday with Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker facing his toughest test after 18 years in charge.

Europe’s longest-serving leader will bid for re-election amid signs of voter weariness with Luxembourg’s more familiar political faces, and as it sees unemployment rise to almost seven percent and debt tripled in the last 15 years.

The snap elections in the European Union’s wealthiest nation per capita follow a scandal over misconduct by the secret service fractured the coalition government headed by Juncker’s Christian Social People’s Party (CSV).

Its junior Socialist Party (LSAP) partners withheld support when opponents accused the premier of having been too busy steering the euro currency through crisis — in his capacity as head of the Eurogroup — to get his dysfunctional intelligence service back on track.

Misdemeanours by the SREL secret service, which the premier is supposed to oversee, included illegal phone-taps, corruption, and even dodgy dealings in luxury cars.

Aged almost 59, Juncker has spent literally half his life in government.

His CSV party has won every single election in Luxembourg since its establishment in 1944, bar one poll in 1974. But ahead of this vote, held seven months early, it is on tenterhooks.

Though Luxembourgers deem Juncker competent to continue to steer the state, surveys show a younger generation of politicians increasingly picking up support, notably 40-year-old Liberal Party chief Xavier Bettel.

Also expected to make gains is Greens newcomer Francois Bausch, who for the past three years has run the Luxembourg town hall with Bettel.

Juncker is best known in Europe for a tumultuous eight-year stint as head of the eurozone finance ministers Eurogroup, which ended in January.

After being accused of obsessing over the troubles of the single currency instead of concentrating on the job at home, Juncker promised to refocus on Luxembourg.

Bettel and Bausch have made no secret of their hopes of forming a coalition government without Juncker’s Christian Democrats. But they would need the support of the Socialists.

On the campaign trail Juncker hammered home the message that a three-party coalition for Luxembourg — which would be the first of its kind — would undermine the nation.

Nine parties in all are running in the elections, from the extreme leftwing Dei Lenk to populist right-wing group ADR.