Attracting and Protecting Seasonal Workers from third countries in the EU

For almost 150 years, Luxembourg depends on two kinds of migration, qualified and non-qualified, in order to deal with the workforce needs of its economy. Compared to other EU Member States, Luxembourg is a country with the largest proportion of foreigners; however, this foreign population is mainly composed of EU citizens. In Luxembourg, 296.500 residents (47,4%) of a total population of 626.100 are foreigners. 247.900 are EU citizens representing 39.6% of the total population of the country and 83,6% of the foreign population of the country. The 48.600 third-country nationals represent only 7,8% of the total population and 16.4% of the foreign population.

Due to its size and geographic location, Luxembourg has an access to a very particular form of economic migration: cross-border workers. Globalisation has also played a decisive role in the development of economic migration for the Luxembourgish labour market. The financial center was obliged to become highly specialised in order to remain competitive in regards to other financial centers and to maintain its volume of business. In order to maintain its competitive advantage, Luxembourg needs highly skilled personnel, which, up until now, the country has found within the Greater Region.

With regards to the labour market: the number of salaried workers on 31 December 2019 shows that Luxembourgish residents represented only 26,5%, EU citizens (other than Luxembourgish) 23,4% and third-country national residents only 4,2%. Cross-border workers from Belgium, France and Germany represented 46% of the workforce.

The Luxembourgish labour market is not a national labour market but rather a labour market of the Greater Region with a trend to become an international labour market. This situation can be explained in the context of the free movement of services and the posted workers coming from other Member States to Luxembourg. The need of workforce must be placed in this particular context, taking into account the “internal reserves”, the free movement of persons from which EU citizens, who reside in the country, benefit and the large majority of cross-border workers. To this framework one must add a range of measures that were introduced by the Luxembourgish authorities in order to regulate the labour market. Some of these measures did not have labour market needs as their only objective, but were also foreseen to manage integration processes.
The attitude of the successive governments was to adapt immigration to the economic needs of the country. The government policy intends to implement an economic diversification policy, focused on attracting high added value activities such as ICT, health technologies, space, logistics, industry and FinTech. In consequence and taking into consideration the specificities of Luxembourg’s labour market, third-country national seasonal workers are not a priority of the Luxembourgish government.