Why Luxembourg prime minister Luc Frieden’s leadership style is alienating even his traditional supporters

When Luc Frieden became the first sitting prime minister to also preside over the CSV in March last year, some commentators implied that the dual mandate gave him too much power.

Much of the content and tone of Tuesday’s State of the Nation address to parliament suggest that, despite his protestations that decisions are being taken democratically, Frieden is taking advantage of his position to force through policy.

For starters, it seems that the prime minister’s announcement that Luxembourg would be a willing signatory of the trade deal between the European Union and the Mercosur countries of South America was made without consulting Agriculture Minister Martine Hansen. That is the same Martine Hansen who was elected vice-president of the CSV, alongside Esch-sur-Alzette Mayor Christian Weis, just over a year ago.

Frieden insisted that the government had consulted with farmers over agriculture – yet the farmers’ alliance is severely critical of the prime minister – just as it did with the entire population over pensions reform and, yes, with the unions over employment rights.

The reform of employment rights was not going to be done top-down but bottom-up in consultation with social partners, the premier said.

“We don’t govern alone, but we seek dialogue,” he told parliament on Tuesday. But OGBL trade union leader Nora Back reiterated her claim this week that the Luxembourg model of tripartite social dialogue between government, unions and employers was under “real attack”.

Together with the LCGB, the country’s largest trade union is planning a massive demonstration against government industrial relations policy on 28 June.

Even employers lobby group UEL has criticised the pensions reform details Frieden announced on Tuesday for being unfair and for lacking substance, while the CGFP civil servants’ union has said that the weeks of public debate on the subject had proven to be a “sham.”

Social Security Minister Martine Deprez is due to present the full package of the reform before the summer.

There are even suggestions that the CGFP may join the 28 June protest, something that seemed highly unlikely at the start of the year when the government seemed to give them everything they wanted – or as close to it as possible – in a new pay and working conditions agreement.

Taking on the CGFP is a challenge fraught with danger. Indeed, Frieden would do well to recall his time as budget and treasury minister in Jean-Claude Juncker’s CSV-LSAP coalition at the end of the 1990s. The government, trying to head off the rising popularity of what was then the Action Committee for Democracy and Pensions Justice (and would later become the ADR), chose to reform civil service pensions.

That sparked a mass protest in July 1998, when 20,000 civil servants crowded the Knuedler. Less than a year later, at the 1999 parliamentary elections, the CSV lost two seats and its junior coalition partner lost four seats, allowing a resurgent DP, which had supported the civil servants’ and voted against the reform in parliament, to enter government with a chastened CSV.

Last November, when asked by Luxembourg Times editor-in-chief Cordula Schnuer, Frieden said he was saddened by accusations that his policies were in some ways cold or heartless. He said these claims were used by “those who do not find other arguments to attack [me].”

However, that reputation was forged at the start of this century, when, as justice minister, Frieden was responsible for repatriating scores of families who had fled to Luxembourg from the former Yugoslavia despite many of them having found work and their children being integrated into local schools in the Grand Duchy.

There is no doubt that Frieden is an intelligent man who sticks by his convictions. But as communications coach Kate Mason argued in an FT opinion piece published on Wednesday, leaders “can choose from a vast range of unexpected pairings” including being “warm and principled”.

The problem is, Frieden this week has chosen to double down in the face of the backlash against many of the policies he announced on Tuesday.

“The majority in this chamber has a responsibility, and it will be measured on how it carries out that responsibility,” he said in parliament. It may seem refreshing to have a government leader who does not bow to public pressure or switch policy at whim. But Frieden seems to have lost the faith of vast swathes of even his most traditional supporters.

Luckily for the prime minister, with elections still three years away, he has time to win round the voters who will be the ultimate measure of the government’s performance. He can ill afford to antagonise them any further.