Luxembourg’s private security firms will get a new legal framework after MPs approved a reform that clarifies what agents may do at events, in buildings and around private sites, while reaffirming that public order remains a job for the police.

The vote came during a parliamentary sitting that combined the weekly government question time with debates and votes on several bills, including private security, journalists’ access to institutional documents and the digitalisation of bankruptcy procedures. Ministers were also pressed on the delayed publication of a LUCET report linked to Projet Alpha, the heatwave relocation of asylum seekers from the Kirchberg tent site and conditions for women in prison.

Parliament passed bill 8031 on Tuesday by 55 votes in favour, no votes against and four abstentions, after a debate that repeatedly returned to the same boundary: private security companies may protect people, property and events under contract, but they do not hold police powers.

“A private security company can play an important preventive and surveillance role. But it is not the police,” CSV MP Charles Weiler, the bill’s rapporteur, told MPs. “It has no prerogatives of public power.”

The bill, deposited in 2022 by then justice minister Sam Tanson, updates Luxembourg’s 2002 framework for private security services. It gives legal recognition to event-security activities and sets clearer rules for agents’ powers, training, the use of dogs, video surveillance and the line between private guarding and public policing.

No grey zones

“What may an agent do, what may he not do? How far do his powers go? Where do they stop? And where are we in the area of competence of the police?” Weiler said.

Memories of Luxembourg City’s decision during the previous legislature to use private security agents in public areas, particularly around the Gare district, shaped much of the debate. The move had triggered criticism over the outsourcing of public-order functions.

For the LSAP, the bill was not only about the private-security sector, but about “a border that must remain clear in a country governed by the rule of law”.

“The police have the monopoly of the state’s legitimate force,” MP Dan Biancalana said. “That monopoly must not be relativised, not through the back door, not through outsourcing, not through private companies that end up taking over tasks that, in a democratic rule of law, must be reserved for the police.”

Not the police

Déi gréng also backed the bill, with Tanson saying the final text had kept the spirit of the proposal she had deposited as justice minister. Its central principle, she said, was that public space and public order remained the responsibility of public authorities.

Private agents will still be able to hold someone in a case of flagrante delicto until police arrive, but MPs stressed that this is not a special police power. Tanson said such a power was no broader than that available to any person under criminal-procedure rules.

That did not mean there was a problem with private security firms as such, Tanson added, noting that they were present at many events and performed useful work. “They are not the police. They are not a substitute for the police.”

The Pirate Party’s four abstentions came with a warning that the safeguards were still too thin. The party accepted the need to modernise a sector employing almost 4,000 people, but Sven Clement argued that the bill left unresolved questions over public-space definitions, video surveillance, weapons, security dogs and municipal responsibilities.

“Who watches the watchers?” Clement asked, warning that any ambiguity over the boundary between public and temporarily privatised space would weigh on citizens’ fundamental rights.

Justice minister Elisabeth Margue said the reform had two aims: to distinguish clearly between private-security missions and police powers, and to give a legal framework to event-security work that had already become a practical reality. Most provisions will apply after three months, while the event-security rules will apply after six months, giving companies and public authorities time to prepare.

Alpha report challenge

A separate question-time challenge focused on Projet Alpha, after the Pirate Party accused the education ministry of withholding a LUCET report until after parents had to choose their children’s school track.

Projet Alpha is the government’s pilot for early literacy teaching, under which participating children can enter either a German-language or French-language literacy track. Clement argued that the LUCET assessment mattered because it contained quantitative and qualitative data parents should have before making that choice.

The report by the Luxembourg Centre for Educational Testing had been ready since February but was being held back until mid-July, Clement said. Parents, however, had to decide by 9 July whether their children would enter the German-language or French-language track.

The Chamber had been told when voting the law that decisions would be based on empirical data, Clement argued. If the government believed the reports showed that Projet Alpha benefited children, he said, the education ministry should publish them before parents had to make their choice.

A Pirate motion called for the report to be made public within 24 hours. Chamber president Claude Wiseler later said an urgent question and the motion would be placed on the agenda on Wednesday morning.

Heat at Kirchberg

Heatwave conditions at the Kirchberg tent site used for asylum seekers also came under scrutiny, after Radio 100,7 reported that 431 people had been relocated.

The questions from déi gréng covered whether the figure was correct, what temperatures had triggered the move and whether the people concerned had since returned to the site.

People had been moved to the emergency structure at Findel after several days of red heat alerts, according to family minister Max Hahn. Vulnerable residents had been assessed and moved first, but the government later decided to evacuate all residents from the Kirchberg tent site for the period concerned.

The main lesson from the episode was that cooling systems at the site had either not worked or had not worked well enough to get through the heatwave without risk to residents, Hahn said.

Women in prison

Conditions for women in prison formed the sitting’s longest debate, after LSAP group president Taina Bofferding requested an interpellation on long-running gaps in infrastructure, privacy, psychiatric care, maternity procedures, work and reintegration.

Women make up only a small minority of the prison population and too often receive only a small share of political attention, Bofferding told MPs. “Women in prison may be a minority, but their rights are not minority rights,” she said. “They are fundamental rights.”

The debate focused heavily on Block F in Schrassig, where MPs said the same limited infrastructure was used by women in pre-trial detention, convicted women and minors. The LSAP also criticised the lack of progress on psychiatric care and the limited work and training offered to women prisoners. “Reintegration does not begin the day after release,” Bofferding said. “It begins in prison.”

Margue accepted that women prisoners had specific needs and said she and equality minister Yuriko Backes had visited Schrassig in May after receiving the report. Most short-term recommendations had either been carried out, were under way or would be implemented, she argued, while some issues could only be resolved through new infrastructure.

Other votes

Among the lower-profile debates and votes, MPs also dealt with the modernisation of Luxembourg’s journalism law, including rules on journalists’ access to institutional documents.

MPs agreed to an evaluation after three years, following concerns that journalists should be involved in assessing whether the new system works in practice. Some journalists had doubts about whether the law and the planned measures would be sufficient or effective, LSAP MP Francine Closener said.

MPs also unanimously passed bill 8735, a targeted change to bankruptcy and judicial-reorganisation procedures. Rapporteur Laurent Mosar said the reform would allow certain acts, including summons enrolment, appeal documents and petitions, to be filed by email, while requiring court registries to confirm receipt and using only officially published court addresses.

The bill passed with 60 votes in favour.