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Europe in Luxembourg
Luxembourg – Home to European Institutions
During the night of 24/25 July, 1952, in Paris, after endless diplomatic negotiations on where to establish the seat of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) had become deadlocked, Luxembourg’s Minister of foreign affairs, Joseph Bech, proposed that the city of Luxembourg be made the provisional seat of the new organization. His negotiating counterparts agreed, thus permitting the organization to go to work without the need for a final decision on this controversial question.
As a result, the capital of the Grand Duchy became the provisional seat of the ECSC’s High Authority, Consultative Committee and Court of Justice, and meetings of the Special Council of Ministers were also held here. Although sittings of the Common Assembly were held in Strasbourg, the assembly’s secretariat took up residence in Luxembourg. This decision was pivotal for the city, as – in the words of Jean Monnet – it made Luxembourg a “crossroads of Europe.”
Meanwhile, the issue regarding the location of the seats of community institutions was still far from being definitively resolved. In April 1965, the signing of the Merger Treaty which combined the executive bodies of the three European Communities (ECSC, EEC, EAEC/EURATOM) led to a concentration of the Council and Commission services in Brussels. As a result, Luxembourg lost the High Authority (of the ECSC). However, in return, it kept the judicial and financial institutions. In a decision contained in an annex to the Merger Treaty, both the city of Luxembourg and Brussels were designated as provisional seats of European Community institutions.
At the European Council in Edinburgh, in December 1992, the representatives of the Member States, in mutual agreement, adopted a decision that determined the seats of the institutions. This decision was confirmed by Protocol No. 8 annexed to the agreements reached as part of the Treaty of Amsterdam of 1997.
Today, Luxemburg is the seat of the European Court of Justice, Court of First Instance and Court of Auditors, as well as the European Investment Bank. In addition, the General Secretariat of the European Parliament and a number of directorate generals and departments of the European Commission have their seats here. In all, more than 9,000 civil servants of the European Union work in the city of Luxembourg’s European Quarter atop the Kirchberg plateau. In the months of April, June and October, the Council of the European Union (Council of Ministers) also meets here.
Additional information can be found on the respective websites of the European bodies and institutions seated in Luxembourg:
Gateway to the European Union:
Council of the European Union:
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/showPage.aspx?lang=EN
The Government of Luxembourg’s discussion platform on the European Union:
www.europaforum.public.lu
Pierre Werner Institute:
www.ipw.lu
European Institutions
Court of Justice of the European Union:
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/jcms/j_6/
European Court of Auditors:
http://eca.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eca_main_pages/home
European Investment Bank:
http://www.eib.org/?lang=en&
European Investment Fund:
www.eif.org
European Agencies
General Secretariat of the European Parliament:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/default_en.htm
Several European Commission Services:
http://ec.europa.eu/index_en.htm
Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat):
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home
Publications Office of the European Union:
http://publications.europa.eu/index_en.htm
Translation Center for the Bodies of the European Union (CdT):
http://cdt.europa.eu/EN/Pages/Homepage.aspx
Executive Agency for Health and Consumers (EAHC):
http://ec.europa.eu/eahc/