Corruption in Luxembourg

Levels of corruption in Luxembourg are generally said to be very low, and there a strong legal framework for combating corruption^[1] in the country. Surveys however indicate that a majority of the population believe political parties are either "corrupt" or "extremely corrupt."

Political corruption does surface. According to Transparency International Global Corruption Barometer 2013, 53% of the surveyed households considered political parties "corrupt" or "extremely corrupt", and 33% had the same opinion about Parliament. Moreover, a significant number of the surveyed households considered that the government's fight against corruption "ineffective" and that corruption had increased over the previous two years.^[2] On Transparency International's 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, Luxembourg scored 81 on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"). When ranked by score, Luxembourg ranked 5th among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked first is perceived to have the most honest public sector.^[3] For comparison with regional scores, the best score among Western European and European Union countries ^{[Note 1]} was 90, the average score was 64 and the worst score was 41.^[4] For comparison with worldwide scores, the best score was 90 (ranked 1), the average score was 43, and the worst score was 8 (ranked 180).^[5]

Several other sources indicate that the overlap between business and politics in Luxembourg gives opportunities for corruption, and there is no code of conduct focusing on corruption, conflict of interest and favouritism for procurement officials.^[6][7]

Notes

1. Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom