The Luxembourg Employers’ Association UEL (Union des Entreprises Luxembourgeoises), as the umbrella organisation of employers’ associations, represents the professional chambers and employers‘ federations of the Grand Duchy, which provide 80% of employment and produce 85% of GDP. 

UEL promotes a sustainable, prosperous economy for the country, its inhabitants and the people who work there. It takes action for an economy that attracts investors and talent. 

UEL’s ambition is to ensure the competitiveness and attractiveness of companies by acting on 3 key topics of social dialogue, in a sustainable development (CSR) approach: employment and labour law, social security and taxation.

Luxembourg faces a number of challenges, some structural, which impact the competitiveness of the country and companies in all sectors: 

Michel Reckinger, President of UEL, and Jean-Paul Olinger, Director of UEL, explain the stakes of these elections.

• 56% of private sector employees in Luxembourg are cross-border workers 
• 55% of companies consider the lack of skilled labor as the main challenge to their economic development in 2023 
• 40% of participating companies that currently allow telecommuting indicated that they had already lost a potential candidate because they did not offer enough teleworking 
• 91% of applicants have too many job opportunities to choose from 

Sources : 1er baromètre de l’emploi UEL et Fr2s – janvier 2023 | Enquête sur la pratique du télétravail au Luxembourg UEL – janvier 2023 | Panorama sur le monde du travail luxembourgeois STATEC – avril 2022 | Baromètre de l’Économie 2/2022 Chambre de Commerce

For UEL, the priority will be Luxembourg’s ability to attract, train and mobilise the talents of tomorrow. Sustainable talents, whether it be:

• the individual talent of managers, employees and self-employed people,
• the collective talent of companies creating tomorrow’s wealth,
• or the team talent that is so distinctive in public-private partnerships, because it is sustainable, scalable and committed to the transition towards sustainable development

→ Objective: to develop a more attractive environment for sustainable talent – companies and employees – by acting on employment, social security, tax policies to tackle the challenges.

• Facilitate the collective access of companies to lifelong learning, among other things by increasing the co-financing rate, in particular for SMEs and shortage professions and to deal with societal transformations 

• Make the organization of work more flexible to meet the needs of companies faced with the increase in leave and absences 

• Prioritize decision-making at the level of the company and the employment contract in order to put in place personalized solutions and take into account new ways of work 

• Allow employers to respond to employees‘ requests for teleworking by removing the obstacles to its implementation for at least 2 days per week (social security and taxation) 

• Enhance the self-employed status through better social protection and access to co-financing aid for continuing education 

• Increase legal certainty, clarify and simplify administrative rules and procedures for employers

• Ensure the sustainability of social security systems through sound and prudent management of finances by avoiding any increase in social security contributions, an analysis of the various possible systems and financing and strengthening of approaches in the fight against abuse and fraud 

• Work for an efficient, quality and accessible health system through an adequate prevention policy, a nomenclature adapted to medical progress, the development of a national digitalization strategy, a strengthening of the positioning (e.g. gatekeeper) of primary medicine an optimization based on an anti-accumulation of services provided – „Not everything everywhere“ and the use in a planned framework of new technology at the service of health 

• Guarantee access to an old-age pension for future generations by raising the effective retirement age which is more in line with changes in life expectancy,  lowering the ceiling to contribute to the objective of insurance, bringing the system of early old-age pensions for the self-employed closer to that for employees and support for the use of supplementary pension mechanisms 

• Individual talents: promote Luxembourg’s attractiveness for talents by improving the participation bonus and the scheme for impatriates,  the introduction of a housing mobility bonus for young workers and the renegotiation of the rules relating to cross-border teleworking 

• Collective talents: maintain tax attractiveness for companies thanks to an incentive measure for investments in the digital, ecological transition and R&D, and to the reduction of tax rates/withholding tax 

• SMEs/Start-ups: stimulating entrepreneurship thanks to a tax measure encouraging financing SMEs / start-ups by private investors and by introducing a shareholding mechanism suitable employee 

• Legal certainty: reinforce legal certainty and administrative simplification by tax matters by modernizing tax legislation, accelerating the digitalization of tax administration and strengthening the administration/taxpayer dialogue 

• Promote the development of public-private partnerships in order to put the expertise and innovation capacity of the private sector at the service of a prosperous and sustainable economy, encourage social dialogue and improve talent management 
• Accelerate the digitization of public administrations and businesses to make collaboration between administrations, employers, employees and investors more efficient