Luxembourg criminal register holds over 8,000 foreign convictions

Luxembourg’s criminal register contains more than 8,300 convictions handed down by courts in other EU member states, according to a parliamentary response by Justice Minister Elisabeth Margue published Thursday.

In her reply to MP Dan Biancalana, the minister stated that 8,312 convictions from other EU countries are currently recorded in the national criminal register, relating to 5,446 individuals.

Of these, 3,289 concern Luxembourg nationals residing in the country. The register also includes convictions from Switzerland (287), the United Kingdom (34) and Monaco (3).

No system reform needed

The response also details the ongoing cleansing of the register: between 2021 and 2025, between 257 and 359 foreign convictions per year were removed, following notifications from the sentencing states.

Under the current legal framework, Luxembourg does not independently reassess foreign convictions once they are entered into the national criminal record.

Instead, updates depend entirely on notifications from the country where the conviction was issued, in line with EU rules on the exchange of criminal record information and Luxembourg’s Criminal Procedure Code, the minister explained.

Therefore, the status of a foreign conviction is determined by the law of the sentencing state, not Luxembourg law. Once that state informs Luxembourg that a conviction has been rehabilitated or should be removed, the entry is deleted from the Luxembourg criminal record.

Responding to concerns about possible differences in treatment between domestic and foreign convictions, Margue said the government does not see a legal imbalance requiring reform. “No manifest insufficiency in terms of equal treatment emerges at this stage,” she said, effectively ruling out changes to the system for now.

She also confirmed that no EU-level initiative is underway to harmonise rules on expungement or rehabilitation of criminal records, including within the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS), the EU-wide exchange framework.