The stubborn popularity of Luxembourg’s pandemic politicians

Luxembourg in November 2023 saw a new coalition government sworn into office. But roughly one and a half years later, it is the politicians of old who still reign supreme in public opinion.

In every Politmonitor survey that has rolled around since the October 2023 election, the dynamic duo – Xavier Bettel and Paulette Lenert – who steered Luxembourg through the pandemic has led the country’s flock of politicians both in popularity and assessment of their competence.

While Bettel at least remains in government, Lenert has effectively retired from LSAP party leadership. The former deputy PM and health minister is a regular member of parliament. She did not become speaker of the LSAP group in parliament (that job went to Taina Bofferding). She’s not on the party’s executive committee, and she did not run for the party in the European elections.

And yet, she remains the second-most popular politician with voters on both counts – likeability and skills. Despite her popularity, the politician this week said she has no interest in seeking a senior office.

Unlike Lenert’s case – where doing nothing much perhaps has also meant doing nothing wrong – the same cannot be said for Bettel.

While unwavering support for Ukraine is low-hanging fruit in terms of policy, he has bumbled his way through a much more arbitrary position on the Middle East. While Luxembourg emphatically (and financially) supports UNRWA, the UN’s Palestine refugee agency, and says it backs a two-state solution, it has yet to actually recognise Palestine as a state.

Already back in 2014, the Luxembourg parliament had voted a motion calling on the government to recognise Palestinian statehood. The government under then Prime Minister Bettel never did so. A similar motion in parliament last year failed.

Luxembourg skipped an initiative led by Spain, Ireland and a handful of other countries to recognise Palestine, and then – having missed the boat – said it was looking for a second round of allies. Malta this May said it would recognise Palestine… Bettel instead held consecutive press conferences during which he essentially had nothing new to say.

He has also refused to use the term genocide in connection with Gaza, saying that only international courts can judge whether this legal term is appropriate to use.

The International Court of Justice’s final verdict could take years to come but it said in a preliminary order at the start of last year that there is a “real and imminent risk” that Israel is plausibly violating the rights of Palestinians under the Genocide Convention. A decision by the International Criminal Court is also still pending.

The UN meanwhile has already concluded that Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza are consistent with genocide.

His condemnation of Israel’s violent excesses is ambiguous at best (he did support an EU push to investigate trade with settler businesses) but with more than 50,000 Palestinians killed and Gaza’s population on the brink of starvation, his “we are friends of neither Israel nor Palestine. We are friends of peace” stance is wearing thin.

He then raised eyebrows when reportedly blocking sanctions against Rwandan army officers and M23 rebels in Brussels during a foreign minister’s meeting, suggesting for the package to be delayed until after mediation talks between the warring sides in Congo and Rwanda.

Bettel refuted the claims, saying he did not veto the sanctions as there had not even been a finalised text to vote on. Foreign ministers adopted the sanctions at a later meeting that Bettel did not attend.

Despite the brouhaha, in voter opinion, he is Luxembourg’s most skilled politician. And its most popular.

Veteran politicians rule

The DP’s Charles Goerens – a veteran member of the European Parliament with little exposure in national politics – has been in third spot since the Politmonitor began including MEPs last year.

Luxembourg City mayor Lydie Polfer – despite a lack of affordable housing in the capital, emptying high streets, missing cycle paths and a lost court spat over transparency – places fourth.

Luxembourg is often praised for its political stability, but perhaps there can be too much of a good thing, and ideas of old hold too much power.

Prime Minister Luc Frieden was promptly penalised for daring change. More flexible shop opening hours, ending union monopoly over collective work agreements, a needed reform of a pension system that cannot sustain itself – the PM’s push out of the “but this is how we’ve always done it” mindset saw him drop substantially in voter esteem.

It also goes to once again show the power of Luxembourg’s labour unions, because while a vast majority of voters agreed that employer groups has been sufficiently heard by the government, they felt that labour union opinion had not been respected.

And once again, the gulf between a private sector foreign workforce and largely public sector electorate raises its head in Luxembourg, but for lack of data we simply don’t know what the Politmonitor would look like if non-voters were included.