This is a subject that regularly comes up in the ears of political leaders in the Grand Duchy. With 117,000 French cross-border workers and 53,000 Germans, there are thousands of workers who each year pay their taxes in Luxembourg and not in their country of origin. A shortfall for the two states, denounced in a forum by elected officials from each country, as well as members of the association Beyond Borders.
For Martine Etienne, Charlotte Leduc, Caroline Fiat (three LFI-NUPES deputies in Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle) as well as Alain Casoni and Dominique Gros, honorary mayors of Villerupt and Metz, on the French side, and SPD deputies Verena Hubertz, Emily Wontz and Lena Werner, but also the mayor of Trier, Wolfram Leibe, the solution involves “fiscal compensation by the Luxembourg State to the local border authorities concerned”.
Distribution according to the number of cross-border commuters per municipality
“We are not opposed to cross-border work, specify the signatories in the preamble. It is quite understandable that our fellow citizens go to work on the other side of the border if they find a better salary there. But they point out that “for these people, public expenditure is generated both at the place of residence and the place of work”. They therefore imagined an agreement similar to that which binds Luxembourg to Belgium and allows the latter to recover 48 million euros per year. According to the same calculations, France “could thus receive” between 192 and 247 million euros and Germany between 100 and 128 million. The money would be distributed between the different municipalities according to their number of cross-border workers. In France, Metz could then recover between 5 and 6.4 million euros, Thionville between 8.1 and 10.5 million and Villerupt between 3 and 3.9 million euros. The same request had already been launched with the Grand Duchy in 2019, without result!
