Luxembourg

Whether a short visit needs a visa is not in Luxembourg law. Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 carries two annexes: nationals of Annex I countries need a visa to cross the external border, nationals of Annex II countries do not for stays of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period. Article 34 of the Act of 29 August 2008 restates the same ninety-in-a-hundred-and-eighty measure in Luxembourgish terms and adds the conditions an officer checks: a valid travel document, the visa or the travel authorisation where one is required, no Schengen alert, no entry ban, and means of support for the stay and the return. The national layer that catches people out is article 36: a third-country national intending to stay less than three months must make a declaration of arrival at the commune within three working days of entering, and a hotel registration form stands in for it only where the stay is for tourism.

Luxembourg's permit for someone who is not coming to work is the autorisation de séjour pour raisons privées in article 78 of the Act of 29 August 2008. Since the Act of 21 April 2023 gave article 78 its present wording, the first limb is not simply about having enough money: the applicant must be able to live on resources that come either from a professional activity carried on in another Union or Schengen state, or from an old-age, invalidity or survivor's pension paid by a Luxembourgish or other Union or Schengen social-security body. Income from a source outside that area does not answer the article as written. There is a second limb for someone whose personal or family ties make a refusal a disproportionate interference with private and family life, and that one is not about the geography of the money at all. Both limbs need sickness insurance and suitable housing, and both are applied for and granted before you arrive.

Luxembourg has no permit called a retirement visa, and age is not a condition of any residence title in the Act of 29 August 2008. What it has instead is one half of one point of article 78: a residence authorisation for private reasons may be granted to a third-country national who can live on an old-age, invalidity or survivor's pension paid by a Luxembourgish social-security body or by one in another Union or Schengen state. That is the pension route, and the condition that decides most cases is not the size of the pension but who pays it. A pension from a scheme outside the Union and the Schengen area is not the thing article 78(1) point 1 b) describes, and the Act names no other category that is.

A third-country national needs a work authorisation to take paid employment, and for most people it arrives inside the residence permit rather than beside it. Article 42 makes the minister grant the residence authorisation and the work authorisation together, after checking four things: that the priority of certain workers under the Labour Code is not prejudiced, that the activity serves the country's economic interests, that the applicant has the professional qualifications, and that there is a contract for a post declared vacant with the employment agency. The resulting card is a single permit valid for at most a year, and article 43 then limits it: for the first year of legal employment the holder may work in one sector and one profession only, with any employer. After that year the renewed permit opens the whole labour market. The application is made from abroad and has to be granted before the applicant enters.

The investor permit is article 53bis of the Act of 29 August 2008, inserted by the Act of 8 March 2017. It offers four ways in and prices them very differently: 500,000 euros into an existing Luxembourgish company with a commitment to hold the investment and the headcount for five years; 500,000 euros into a company to be created, with five jobs to be filled within three years in cooperation with the employment agency; 3,000,000 euros into an investment and management structure that keeps appropriate substance in Luxembourg; or 20,000,000 euros on deposit with a financial institution established in Luxembourg, held for at least five years. Investments whose main object is buying and letting property are excluded in terms. The first three routes have to be at least three-quarters equity, the deposit route entirely so, and every transaction under the article is made subject to the anti-money-laundering law of 12 November 2004 by the article itself.

A third-country student needs a residence authorisation for study under article 56 of the Act of 29 August 2008, and the first condition is already settled before the file is opened: admission to a higher-education establishment for a full-time cycle leading to one of its own higher-education qualifications. The Act defines which establishments count, and the list is short - the University of Luxembourg, the establishments teaching the brevet de technicien supérieur, and private higher-education institutions authorised under the Act of 14 August 1976. A minor needs parental authorisation; everyone needs sickness insurance and proof of resources for the stay and the return. The resources are not a sum in the Act: the grand-ducal regulation puts them at 80 per cent of the guaranteed minimum income, which is a benefit the Act creating it no longer exists to define. The card runs at least a year and allows fifteen hours of paid work a week.

Article 38 of the Act of 29 August 2008 lists the temporary residence authorisations a third-country national may hold, and descent is not one of them: the list runs salaried worker, self-employed worker, sportsperson, student, pupil, trainee, volunteer, au pair, researcher, family member, investor, and private or particular reasons. Family member means the sponsor's spouse or registered partner and children under eighteen, with dependent first-degree ascendants at the minister's discretion - a relationship traced downwards from someone already here, not backwards to an ancestor. Where Luxembourg does reach back is in nationality rather than residence, and it reaches a long way: the option in article 23 of the Act of 8 March 2017 is open to an adult whose parent or grandparent holds or held Luxembourgish nationality, with no residence condition and no language condition in the article. The wider route, for a descendant of an ancestor who was Luxembourgish on 1 January 1900, carried two deadlines, and the later of them was 31 December 2025.

Family reunification for a third-country sponsor is article 69 of the Act of 29 August 2008, and it front-loads the conditions on the person already here: a residence title valid for at least a year, a well-founded prospect of long-term residence, twelve months of residence in Luxembourg, stable regular and sufficient resources without recourse to social assistance, suitable housing, and sickness insurance for the whole family. Article 70 then says who may come: the spouse, the registered partner, and unmarried children under eighteen as of right; dependent first-degree ascendants and adult children objectively unable to support themselves because of their health at the minister's discretion. A beneficiary of international protection is excused the article 69(1) conditions if the application comes within six months of the grant. Where the sponsor is a Union citizen the file moves to chapter 2 and becomes a registration rather than an authorisation - and article 12(3) puts the family of a Luxembourgish citizen on exactly that footing too.

Chapter 2 of the Act of 29 August 2008 is the free-movement regime written into Luxembourgish law, and it works differently from everything after it. A Union citizen with an identity card or passport may enter and stay three months with no further condition. Beyond three months the right continues if the person works or is self-employed, or has sufficient resources not to become a burden on social assistance together with sickness insurance, or is enrolled in an approved educational establishment with the same resources and insurance. What is asked for then is a registration certificate from the commune, within three months of arrival - and article 8(4) says in terms that the certificate does not establish the right and may not be made a precondition of anything. Five years of uninterrupted lawful residence give a permanent right that none of those conditions attaches to. Article 33 extends the whole chapter to nationals of the other EEA states and of Switzerland, and to British citizens within the scope of the withdrawal agreement, subject to chapter 2bis.

Naturalisation under article 14 of the Act of 8 March 2017 asks for three things of an adult: habitual residence and lawful stay in Luxembourg for at least five years, the last of them uninterrupted; a pass in the Luxembourgish-language evaluation examination; and attendance at, or a pass in, the course "Vivre ensemble au Grand-Duché de Luxembourg". The language examination is set in Luxembourgish, not in French or German, and it is oral on both sides - speaking at level A2 of the Common European Framework and listening at B1 - with a weak speaking mark able to be carried by the listening one. The course runs twenty-four hours across three modules. Beside naturalisation the Act keeps a second door, option, with ten separate openings, and two of them ask for neither residence nor language: descent from a Luxembourgish parent or grandparent, and voluntary military service. A third, for someone resident twenty years, replaces the examination with a twenty-four-hour language course.

Article 2 of the Act of 4 December 1967 makes a natural person a resident taxpayer if they have their domicile fiscal or their séjour habituel in the Grand Duchy, and a resident taxpayer is taxed on worldwide income while a non-resident is taxed only on Luxembourg-source income. The Act does not say what either term means. The definitions are in the loi d'adaptation fiscale of 16 October 1934, which is still in force, is still printed in German, and gives them in paragraphs 13 and 14: a person has a Wohnsitz where they keep a dwelling in circumstances suggesting they will keep and use it, and a gewöhnlicher Aufenthalt where they stay in circumstances showing the stay is not merely temporary. Then comes the hard edge: unlimited tax liability always arises where the stay in the country lasts longer than six months, and in that case the liability extends back over the first six months as well.

Opening an account in Luxembourg is governed, so far as the law read here goes, by the duty the professional owes rather than by any status the customer has to hold. Article 3 of the Act of 12 November 2004 requires customer due diligence whenever a business relationship is entered into, on occasional transactions at or above 15,000 euros, on transfers of funds or crypto-assets above 1,000 euros, on cash dealings in goods at or above 10,000 euros, whenever money laundering is suspected whatever the threshold, and whenever there is doubt about identification data already held. The measures are identification of the customer against reliable independent sources, identification of the beneficial owner, understanding the purpose of the relationship and monitoring it. Nothing in the article makes residence a condition of an account. Where origin does bite is article 3-2: business relationships involving a high-risk country attract enhanced measures by law, and the Act defines a high-risk country by pointing at a Commission list and at the FATF rather than by naming any state.

Article 1 of the Code de la sécurité sociale lists who is compulsorily insured, and every limb of it is an activity or a status rather than a nationality: people who carry on a paid professional activity for someone else in Luxembourg, apprentices in paid training, the self-employed in the trades, commerce, agriculture or the intellectual professions, the assisting spouse or partner, members of religious associations, and recipients of a Luxembourgish pension who live in the country. A seafarer is the one limb where nationality appears, and even there residence is an alternative to it. For someone who falls outside all of that, article 2 keeps two doors: continued insurance for a person who has just lost cover after six continuous months of it, applied for within three months; and voluntary insurance for any resident who cannot be covered otherwise, with benefits starting after a three-month qualifying period. Family cover under article 7 extends an insured person's protection to a spouse or partner, to children for whom a tax allowance is given, and to certain adult children under thirty.

Article 84 of the arrêté grand-ducal of 23 November 1955 splits foreign licences in two on the state that issued them. A valid licence issued by another state of the European Economic Area is recognised when the holder takes up normal residence in Luxembourg, and the holder may exchange it for a Luxembourgish licence or have it registered at any time - there is no deadline and no test. A licence issued outside the EEA is transcribed only if the issuing state is a contracting party to the Geneva Convention on Road Traffic of 19 September 1949 or the Vienna Convention of 8 November 1968, and only on four conditions: 185 days of residence in Luxembourg, a licence still valid on the day the application is lodged, no suspension or withdrawal of the right to drive, and an application lodged within twelve months of taking up residence. Miss the twelve months and the licence stops being valid for driving in Luxembourg; transcription is then still possible but requires a theory and practical control test. For a state party to neither convention, transcription is refused in terms.

Luxembourg does not decide this. Personal property imported by someone transferring their normal residence from a third country into the customs territory enters free of import duties on conditions set by a directly applicable Union regulation: six months' possession and, for durable goods, use at the former residence; a continuous twelve months of normal residence outside the customs territory; and entry for free circulation within twelve months of the move. Alcohol, tobacco, commercial means of transport and trade equipment other than portable instruments of the applied or liberal arts get no relief at all.