spoke during a televised pre-recorded speech aired the evening before Luxembourg’s national day when festivities for 23 June kick off.

“We celebrate our country, our history, our present and our future,” the PM said. “But national day is also an opportunity to reflect and ask ourselves: how are we actually doing?”

For the premier, at least, the country is doing relatively well: Luxembourg experienced less excess mortality than other EU countries while avoiding some of the restrictions imposed elsewhere.

Successive tripartite agreements between the government, employer representatives and trade unions have helped cushion the blow of the energy and cost-of-living crisis and kept inflation at bay.

Annual inflation in Luxembourg was at 2% in May, the lowest rate in the EU. The eurozone average was 6.1% while across the bloc it was 7.1%. Hungary experienced the highest annual inflation in the EU at 21.9%.

“I am aware that there are people among us who aren’t doing well,” said Bettel. “Families who, despite all help, have problems making ends meet and the end of the month. Young people, who have difficulty affording living in Luxembourg. People, who worry about their own future and the future of our planet, a future threatened by climate change.”

With Bettel’s government up for re-election in October, he said Luxembourg in the coming years should become a country of more solidarity and sustainability. He thanked political decision-makers and social partners for working together and “finding solutions in everyone’s interest instead of fighting each other.”

While Luxembourg’s grand duke for the first time during last year’s Christmas speech had added a couple of sentences in English, Bettel stuck to some words in French to acknowledge the many different cultures, languages and traditions coming together in the country.

He paid tribute to associations and volunteers, but also to members of the public and the work they do, for example in support of refugees from Ukraine. “We are an extraordinarily resilient people,” he said, adding that what defines Luxembourg are its “solidarity, cohesion and the unfettered optimism, with which we face our future.”