"The smallest country in the EU" a Luxembourg Travel Page by bzh

The country of Luxembourg is the smallest member state of the European Union. It was one of the original founding members of the Benelux alliance with Belgium and the Netherlands. As a consequence, quite a lot of the European Commission work is done there.

People who work in Luxembourg but not in the European Commission usually work for a banking institution or another. The reasons for this comes back to the middle of the 20th century, when Luxembourg's main renue stream came from the steel industry. The industrial revolution came to an end and Luxembourg was faced with a possible economic disaster. This is when they decided to change the laws in such a way that they would become fiscally interesting for banks. In particular, the current laws of Luxembourg include secrecy clauses similar to the Swiss ones. The consequence of this is that Luxembourg city counts offices from as many banking institutions as the whole of Switzerland. Of course, being a full member of the EU gives it another advantage in this respect.

This makes Luxembourg the wealthiest country in the EU per capita and its capital city is the biggest source of employment in a 100km radius.

In terms of population, Luxembourg counts approximately 400.000 inhabitants, a third of them foreigners. However, because Luxembourg is the main source of employment in the region, this number more or less doubles every day of the week from people who commute from France, Germany or Belgium to come to work.

Luxembourg routinely uses 4 different languages. The traditional spoken language is Luxembourguish and has roots in French, German and the old dialect of the Lorraine region. The official language, i.e., the one all official documents are written in is French. The cultural language is German. The business language is English. Locals speak all four of them.