Opposition parties faced a real dilemma when the government decided to introduce a state of emergency so that it could introduce legislation at speed during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. While they were keen to show solidarity with the measures deemed necessary to halt the spread of the virus, they were also at odds with the way in which the government was pushing through some of its agenda.

But it was not just the pandemic that caused eyebrows to be raised. A refusal by the government to share documentation on the media deal it had with RTL and its memorandum of understanding with Google on its planned data center both ended up before the administrative court.

The CSV told Delano that whenever it pointed to ambiguities or inconsistencies in the laws and in particular in the covid laws, their suggestions were ignored without an exchange of arguments. “Often enough, the result of the vote is then 31-29 [the coalition DP, LSAP and Déi Gréng parties have 31 MPs] in the Chamber. Unfortunately, this is no longer about arguments, but only about arithmetic.”

Fernand Kartheiser of the ADR agrees that the government misused the good will of the opposition in supporting the initial covid-19 state of emergency to marginalise parliament. “The government considers the Chamber of Deputies to be an "executive body" of its own political will. The best illustration of this was that prime minister Bettel said…that if parliament did not do what the government wanted within a few days, the state of crisis would be declared again. That has nothing to do with democracy and respect for parliament!”

Not a rubber-stamping body

The Pirate Party’s Sven Clement argues that parliament has often safeguarded against legislative mistakes, fixed interpretation errors and made the laws better. “As the directly elected representative of every citizen, it should be more respected and not only considered a rubber-stamping body to approve whatever the government proposes,” he told Delano at the end of November.

Nathalie Oberweis, who is scheduled to enter parliament for Déi Lénk when the party rotates its two MPs sometime in May--the halfway mark of the current legislature--says that it was not just during the pandemic that parliament was not properly consulted. “There was already a culture of the government doing many things without listening to parliament or allowing it to play its role,” Oberweis says. “Parliament doesn’t have enough resources and is structurally weak. There are just 120 staff in parliament, which is very little compared to parliaments elsewhere--each MP in foreign parliaments usually have two or even three assistants, whereas in Luxembourg you have just one.” This sentiment is echoed by the CSV, who says that resources are limited.

The ADR, which formed an unlikely—and, in the end, short-lived--technical alliance with the Pirates at the start of this parliament in 2018, wants to have the number of MPs required to form a faction lowered from the current five to three. “This regulation would also be proportional to what we see in most foreign parliaments,” says Kartheiser.

Sven Clement sees a problem in the way majority party MPs often fail to hold the government a bit more accountable, as he puts it. That’s why I really like the English term “loyal opposition”. We might not agree on everything, but it is our job as opposition politicians to be inquisitive, especially in times where government might be tempted to use extraordinary powers. This is critical to the functioning of democracy.

Critical thinking

The obligation to vote in parliament along faction lines is also one that Oberweis would like to see challenged. We don’t have enough contradictory debates in parliament. But changing that requires creating a debating culture in Luxembourg, and that is a long-term process that would involve shifts in the education policy and curricula--“critical thinking is not something that is exactly encouraged in Luxembourg schools,” she says.

The CSV says that “dialogue is not a weakness, but a strength of our democracy. This applies to parliament, but this is also true elsewhere in our society.”

Indeed, the CSV’s parliamentary faction leader Martine Hansen has been at the forefront of a push to hold all parliamentary committee meetings in public. She first submitted the idea after the 2010 state of the nation address but has so far seen her efforts thwarted. Her party colleague Léon Gloden re-submitted the resolution, which was again rejected.  “It is important for citizens to be able to get a complete picture of the work in the Chamber and also of the real positions of the individual parties,” the CSV says. “With more transparency, we will also have more policy coherence. And also more efficiency. And if these are really delicate issues, we can still talk to each other in private. But this should be the exception.”

Kartheiser and his ADR colleagues are not so convinced. “Complete transparency can also have its drawbacks,” he says, citing his predecessor Gast Gibéryen’s warning that it could make it more difficult to reach political consensus in committee meetings. That argument holds no sway with Déi Lénk’s Marc Baum, who has said that the petitions committee’s cross-party consensus has not been hampered by public sittings. Sven Clement agrees that there are only a few exceptions, like when national security or confidential international negotiations are being discussed, to prevent such a move.

Clement also wants better safeguards against lobbying and undue influence. “Parliamentarians should accept to be a bit more transparent when it comes to their business dealings and parliament, as an institution, would do well in opening up the last bastions of secrecy around parliamentarian proceedings,” he says.

The ADR thinks the government often shows a lack of respect towards parliament and opposition party members. “More and more often, we see that awkward [parliamentary] questions are not answered at all,” its faction head Fernand Kartheiser claims. The ADR would also like the Chamber's website to be available in all three administrative languages ​​and making it as accessible as possible for people with disabilities.

The CSV, too, thinks parliament’s website needs improving and would also like it to open up more on social media. “The Chamber must also sell itself better..and must also become more self-confident. Because we are not an attachment of the executive. As a legislative power, we are at the heart of democracy.”

This article is adapted from an original published in the January 2021 print edition of Delano.