Our basic program
With Fokus, we want to redefine and implement the way in which politics is made and experienced by citizens. We see citizens not only as consumers. Citizens are responsible people who live together in an organized society. They themselves legitimize the rules according to which this society functions. The mere consumption of goods, services and political proposals does not define them.
What sets them apart are their opinions and convictions, their personal and social commitment and their willingness to take responsibility – for themselves and for others. For this reason, we want to reach out to all citizens who are committed to democratic, liberal, social and reform-oriented values and ideas and give them and be a platform.
We see broad participation in political processes as an important prerequisite for successful integration. Luxembourg’s society is becoming so multi-layered and diverse that we need to create new foundations for understanding and coexistence. Together, not side by side.
From the 2023 election year, we want to reduce the reform backlog that has accumulated in recent years by taking a strong position in political responsibility and moving our country forward with new people, ideas and concepts.
In order to realize our vision, we are working with citizens to find honest and balanced solutions to tackle the challenges facing our country. To achieve our goals, we will use Fokus.lu as an innovative digital platform, among other things.
Our values include:
- respect for individual freedom, which is accompanied by respect for citizens and personal responsibility;
- awareness of the responsibilities and duties associated with democratic rights and freedoms;
- the protection of the individual and the general public by a state that has effective means of enforcing the law;
- Equal opportunities and equal opportunities for all;
- the irrevocable anchoring of our country in the European Union, which we co-founded and which gives Luxembourg’s sovereignty a modern meaning.
Promoting civic values also means that the state must take responsibility for fulfilling its tasks and purpose. To this end, politics must take an interest in every citizen. It must make this clear with a clear statement. In a democratic society, authority does not come for free or by itself. It must be created and legitimized in our eyes: through honesty, competence and common sense.
The pandemic has shown us the strengths and weaknesses of our society. The tireless commitment of a large majority of society was an important prerequisite for surviving the pandemic. Without it, it would not have been possible to keep the healthcare and education systems running. Without them, it would not have been possible to guarantee law and order. Without them, the supply of essential goods would not have been guaranteed. With this commitment and solidarity, we will also be able to overcome future crises.
Our society must grow together again on the basis of these values.
We recognize the clear need to bring society back together, to close the rifts that have arisen and to work together to tackle the challenges that await our country and Europe.
These include climate change, housing and living in Luxembourg, the well-being and future prospects of our children, mobility and price inflation.
We realize that a series of political scandals has cost a lot of trust in politicians and politics in general and that many people would like to see a different way of shaping and communicating politics. Ideological disputes are making political debates increasingly sterile. The parties are increasingly gearing their programs towards the least voter resistance.
As a result, there are hardly any robust proposals that could change reality for the better; instead, politicians focus on managing known problems and difficulties. Our policy is based on scientific knowledge in order to make the right decisions.
We are always ready to incorporate new findings into our deliberations and realign our positions. To this end, we create thematic working groups that are open to external experts and play a key role in shaping our positions. That is why we are creating an internet platform that brings together the arguments of both members and non-members. It also makes our positions and the path to them transparent.
Recognizing and promoting civic engagement is a fundamental principle of our party; for us, it means supporting communities of solidarity at all levels and thus recognizing their values. In addition to civic values and commitment, dialog with all citizens of Luxembourg is a central concern in order to strengthen the cohesion of all the country’s inhabitants.
We rely on a structured dialog with citizens. This dialog should enable the country’s residents, who represent all sections of society, to submit proposals and suggestions for institutional policy to be addressed by the respective institutions.
From the same point of view, we will be involved in the local elections by setting up citizens’ lists where appropriate. We want to give committed citizens the opportunity to stand up for their community without having to belong to a party or ideology. Political engagement should therefore also be possible without a party card. We want to help ensure that this is the case in as many municipalities as possible.
For us, the political parties have a responsibility to break free from old shackles and involve citizens politically. With this in mind, we also handle party transfers cleanly and transparently. A political mandate belongs to the party for which the candidate stood and should revert to that party in the event of withdrawal or resignation. We want to set a good example here.
We have noticed that a number of political scandals have led to a loss of trust in politics and politicians and that many people would like to see a different way of shaping and communicating politics.
We recognize the clear need to bring society back together, close the rifts that have emerged and work together to tackle the challenges facing our country and Europe. These include climate change, housing and living in Luxembourg, well-being and the future, opportunities for our children, mobility and price inflation.
Recognizing and promoting civic engagement is a principle of our party; for us, this means supporting communities of solidarity at all levels and thus recognizing their values. For example, we want to support clubs and associations whose commitment is an important element of social cohesion in this country.
Voluntary work must be made more attractive through a long overdue framework law. We want to promote and expand volunteering both at a young age and later in life in the service of the general public. Voluntary service should not only bring the person performing it recognition, but also concrete social benefits.
The main aim is to give young people from all over the country and from all walks of life the opportunity to work together with others on important issues: from environmental protection and help for the elderly to support for clubs and associations, development cooperation and the military.
Families are an important part of our society and we want to give them the choice of how they organize themselves. In addition to free childcare and state services to help families balance work and family life, we want to give parents who want to spend more time with their children the opportunity to do so even after parental leave. For something to be a choice for a short or longer period of time, it must finally be ensured that careers under social security law are not interrupted as a result.
This raises the fundamental question of whether it is still possible to afford family life if only one parent has a regular income. In practice, many parents do not have a choice when it comes to combining work and family life. The availability of high-quality childcare outside the family setting must be maintained and expanded. The decision to look after childcare yourself must no longer be seen as an inferior choice and must be better defined and shaped.
Cultural workers have suffered greatly during the pandemic. However, we have seen how important their achievements are in our society. That is why it is an important concern of our party to continue to promote them. A liberal society is inconceivable without cultural life and work. Creative achievement is valued and communicated as an integral part of our way of life.
The current health crises have shown that Luxembourg has a lot of catching up to do in terms of investment in the healthcare system. There is also a lack of the necessary legal framework to be able to react more quickly and effectively to pandemics in the future. The training and attractiveness of the healthcare professions must be adapted to the challenges.
In many places, for example in obstetrics or geriatrics, the demand resulting from population growth is already greater than the supply in some cases. We must agree that an efficient healthcare system has its costs and that population growth will further increase needs and demands. Large medical instruments should be available in sufficient numbers where they are most accessible to patients.
The prevention of mental and physical illnesses and the associated educational work should be strengthened. Finally, it is time to involve stakeholders from the healthcare sector more actively in discussions and decisions.
Politicians remain responsible for setting the necessary course, but the past year has also shown how important scientific dialog and exchange is.
In recent years, school policy has become a permanent construction site in which more graves have been opened than could be closed. Although the education system is a permanent challenge for all stakeholders, it must not become an eternal construction site where some no longer know what others actually want.
Above all, school policy also means a functioning dialog between all stakeholders. Rebuilding this dialog based on trust, with a clear mandate to shape the school system in such a way that responsible and well-educated young people can leave school, is a priority.
We are committed to the general public school system in Luxembourg. We want to counteract the privatization of schools and the creation of an environment in which schools are in competition with each other. The cooperation of all stakeholders must be sustainably improved in order to ensure that everyone can make their way in public school from an early age without getting lost in a potpourri of different assessment methods. Pupils in Luxembourg should be able to complete this school in 12 years.
We see digitalization as a reality, but we also recognize the many problems that excessive and poorly managed digitalization in schools entails. The framework for this and for school policy as a whole must be clearly and comprehensibly defined.
Vocational training has suffered as a result of many reforms, without the training and profession of the craftsman having been significantly upgraded as a result. This training needs a clear framework that is based on the performance principle and becomes an emergency exit for those who otherwise no longer have any hope in the education system.
Craftsmanship must once again be worthwhile and desirable as a profession and be promoted accordingly at school. We want to move away from a logic in which secondary schools increasingly only want to train future students.
The university continues to deserve strong support for education and research. The involvement of companies must be strengthened so that they can benefit from research results more easily than before. Collaboration with international universities must be further expanded, as must the accommodation on offer for students and doctoral candidates.
Every training program must pursue a comprehensible goal. However, this goal is always achieved later, if at all. We fundamentally question whether someone should no longer be allowed to work on the job market before the age of 30 because the academic industry has passed them on from one degree to another by then. In addition to the absurdity of ever longer studies for everyone, this burden is also unsustainable for the social security system.
We want new taxation of labor and capital so that the tax burden can be distributed more fairly. The 2017 tax reform has set some good and important accents, but a further reform that takes price taxation into account, sets ecological accents and eliminates injustices that have existed for years was missed.
We want a new tax landscape in which the number of people to be cared for in a household, rather than marriage, determines the tax burden. This includes children, but also elderly people who are cared for at home. Separation or the death of a partner should no longer affect individual taxation.
A new tax landscape needs a clear ecological focus. However, it must not lead to increased taxation due to ecological and climate policy necessities; on the contrary, responsible behavior should lead to a reduction in the overall tax burden.
We want to simplify the administrative burden for social benefits and thus ensure that citizens who need help also receive it.
In addition to a general tax reform, there is also an urgent need to reform property tax. the principle that children can inherit building land is not up for discussion. However, the extent to which various large landowners collect building land for speculative purposes must be taken into account with a correspondingly substantial tax.
The index needs to be reformed because it is socially unjust; an index tranche does not benefit low earners very much. As the tax table has not been adjusted for inflation since 1996, more and more citizens are slipping into higher and higher tax tranches with each index tranche and receiving less and less of the actual financial compensation.
Social dialog is of particular importance in Luxembourg. We recognize the importance of regular dialogue with the social partners. However, this should not become a sham dialog as in the past, but rather provide joint solutions to overcome acute problems.
Respect for the environment and the preservation of the livelihoods of all people on this planet are central to our policy. We must slow down climate change as much as possible and, on the other hand, prepare our society for major changes. Not only in transport, but also in the world of work and in the way we produce and consume energy.
For us, openness to technology is the best incentive for innovation and scientific progress, which thousands of people and companies work on every day. We want to progressively and consistently reduce our country’s high consumption of resources by giving citizens concrete incentives to change themselves and their consumption in this direction.
The state and local authorities must also make significantly greater efforts to reduce energy and drinking water consumption. In addition, we finally need an awareness that electricity does not come out of the socket, but has to be produced and transported before it can be used.
We take a positive view of the further electrification of the economy and mobility, but without losing sight of the realities.
The creation of a hydrogen economy is increasingly becoming an absolute necessity. From mobility and transportation to heavy industry, hydrogen offers the opportunity to move, heat and produce without harmful emissions. Hydrogen can contribute to the necessary energy independence of our continent and our country.
The Luxembourg Maritime Pavilion can and should become a promotional tool for hydrogen in shipping. Luxembourg can and should be at the forefront of an international development towards an economy that uses green hydrogen as a key resource.
Remaining dependent on fossil fuel suppliers is no longer an option. At the beginning of the pandemic, we all agreed that Europe in general and Luxembourg in particular were no longer producing enough on their own.
A genuine industrial policy is therefore an absolute must. This requires planning, the will to innovate and a willingness to take risks, because global industrial competition is not an easy framework for companies in Luxembourg. And above all, it requires the political will to restore a decent share of industry in our gross domestic product.
We have been discussing growth in Luxembourg for many years as if it could be precisely controlled. But that doesn’t work. At the same time, it is also clear that Luxembourg cannot grow indefinitely. That’s why we need to grow differently.
Taking in more than 10,000 people every year in Luxembourg cannot be a sustainable reality in the long term. The resulting enormous burdens on the housing market, transport and schools, as well as on the administration, police and courts, cannot be sustained in the long term.
That is why we need to think about economic development in the Greater Region. A good option would be joint activity zones outside Luxembourg’s borders that guarantee innovation, production and job creation. Luxembourg and its neighboring countries should benefit equally from these zones.
We want to get a grip on unchecked growth with all its negative consequences, such as the high pressure on the housing market and road traffic. That is why we need an economic development concept for our entire Greater Region. A real territorial reorganization of the country with strong and capable municipalities with regard to national planning requirements is not only necessary, but urgent. This is the only way we will finally get the housing problem under control.
Innovative forms of building, owning and living are necessary, without a waiting period. For this, we need building land and, above all, the will to enforce housing as a basic right. We want to significantly reduce the purchase and sales costs for family homes and thus contribute to administrative simplification.
We also want to abolish the registration fee for owner-occupied residential property. This should make the purchase of private residential property around six percent cheaper. This regulation should also be used as a promotional instrument for rental housing construction: Anyone who builds such apartments should be exempt from the registration fee.
Administrative simplification and faster procedures have been announced as a priority for years. However, not much has happened in this area. We don’t want to hear any more explanations as to why things can’t be done better and faster, we want to find solutions so that they can be done faster. Finally, the players from the construction industry need to be more actively involved in the discussions.
Unfortunately, the past has shown that politicians have not yet had the will to incorporate this existing expertise into the discussion, which, in addition to the cumbersome procedures, leads to further frustration and is certainly not conducive to solving existing problems.
More efficient municipalities also mean a professionalization of politics at municipal level. The role of the mayor, his availability to citizens and his influence on national politics as the mother or father of a municipality must be strengthened. At the same time, there is no room for dual mandates.
On the other hand, we are also calling for more transparency regarding all income in national politics. The salary of a minister is publicly known and comprehensible, but in the Chamber of Deputies there are almost as many different salaries as there are MPs. We want to replace this by introducing a uniform salary for all MPs that corresponds to their responsibility for the country and is taxed like any other salary in the country.
In addition, all economic and social interests of MPs should be publicly listed and the amount of any additional income should be disclosed in sufficient detail. Ministers and MPs should be entitled to a certain percentage of their annual salary as a pension. This would eliminate many cumulative and anti-cumulative provisions and give politicians a clear retirement perspective.
We want the public sector to become more efficient without increasing its costs and cutting back on its services. Digitalization must be tackled consistently and bring real benefits to citizens.
We are convinced that a reform of the civil service must be done with the civil service and not against it. This is the only way to do justice to the important role of the civil service and improve the efficiency of public services again. To this end, we want to enter into a dialog with the representative structures of the public sector.
The rule of law must be given more efficient means to administer and enforce justice. The careers of police officers must meet the challenges in terms of training, recognition and remuneration, and police officers should be doing police work and not constantly writing reports. There is also a great need to reduce administrative hurdles and to staff the courts so that justice can be dispensed more quickly.
The rule of law also and above all means that anyone who endangers public order must be punished. We do not need a demonstration law for this, but only the consistent implementation of the current legal possibilities. People who publicly call for murder and bodily harm, physically endanger other people at demonstrations and attack police officers are calling the state and its monopoly on the use of force into question. This is unacceptable and must be punished consistently and in every case.
Our society is diverse and multifaceted. Moreover, like many other societies, it is plagued by skepticism towards institutions, the spread of fake news and a fragmentation that means many people can no longer find themselves in their state and its institutions. We cannot and must not accept this state of affairs.
Equally, we cannot and must not accept the increasing willingness to use violence and the constant questioning of any kind of authority.
In order to strengthen cohesion among all of the country’s inhabitants, we want to conduct a structured citizens’ dialog in which every resident of Luxembourg aged 16 and over can participate if he or she is chosen by lot. This dialog should lead to the country’s residents – who are selected by lot and represent all sections of society – being able to make proposals and suggestions to institutional policy, which must then also be dealt with by the respective institutions.
This concept of citizen dialog has already led to law and constitutional reforms in many countries, which have subsequently gained very broad social recognition.
We see our country as a strong voice in a strong Europe that is not only economically but also socially united and can defend itself and its values to the outside world at the same time. Establishing Europe as an important player on the world stage in order to be able to assert our ideas on everything from trade policy to climate policy is and remains our major concern in a globalized world.
Our development policy must focus strongly on knowledge transfer and genuine economic development. The charitable approach of the past is no longer effective today. Poverty reduction will only succeed if states are able to act. They must be enabled to build up and formalize an industrial and service economy, have money transfers processed officially and via banks, and be able to levy taxes and draw up a budget in order to enable social redistribution.
Luxembourg can be a strong and competent partner in all of these areas. But we should also continue to focus our opportunities on a limited number of partner countries where cooperation with Luxembourg can really make a difference. It is also possible to cooperate with other European countries in order to achieve certain goals together.
Dictatorial forms of government, very close to Europe, pose a concrete and real threat to peace, prosperity and our way of life, which we must resolutely oppose. The free social order that we want must be defended – even by military means if necessary.
We therefore need a significantly increased defense budget so that the Luxembourg army can provide services that make it indispensable in international operations. This requires adequate investment in infrastructure, materials and training. The days of the supposed insignificance of men and women in uniform are over.
Without powerful armies, Europe will face its opponents naked! Only strong and powerful armies guarantee that Europe will not become a victim of soft power, which will descend into a global confrontation between belligerent powers. Especially in our immediate neighbourhood, it can and must no longer happen that third countries conduct military operations without European legitimacy, the consequences of which Europe has to suffer.
Europeans can protect themselves from this, Europe must do it itself!
In Luxembourg and in Europe, we have let many problems slide for far too long. We want to focus on the challenges we have listed in this policy paper and respond to current developments with bold and innovative solutions.
All of this is in line with the values and goals that Fokus represents both internally and externally.
For a society in which socially, ecologically and intergenerationally equitable coexistence is paramount.
