The government said it has distributed €16.5m in emergency cash grants to small businesses and the self-employed. The €5,000 aid payments do not have to be reimbursed and are meant to help firms and freelancers get through the covid-19 cashflow crunch. The directorate general for small and medium-sized enterprises said it had received 14,600 inquiries and processed 4,800 applications. “In just eight days, around 3,300 applicants have already received financial assistance”, the directorate general said in a press release on 9 April. Lex Delles, the SME minister (DP), stated in the announcement: “We will continue to analyse each application quickly and carefully to ensure efficient support. However, we would like to point out that 1,900 incomplete applications were rejected. Needless to say, only complete applications can be processed in a timely manner.” Information about the government’s aid schemes for SMEs …
Regardless of whether you are a Luxembourg resident or an occasional visitor, you can now travel all over the country without paying anything. This decision is part of an ambitious programme aimed at making public transport easily accessible for everyone. The ambition is also to have a positive impact on the environment, as new users will hopefully choose to benefit from the free public transports and leave their cars at home.
The European Commission has greenlighted a €300m loan package mobilised by Luxembourg’s government to help businesses in difficulty because of the coronavirus crisis. The support measure is aimed at companies and the self-employed working in liberal professions and takes the form of a repayable advance up to €500,000 per company. The commission wrote in a Tuesday press release that the measure was “necessary, appropriate and proportionate to remedy a serious disturbance in the economy of a member state.” Under a commission framework that will be in place until December 2020, member states are allowed to offer direct grants, tax advantages and advance payments up to €800,000 per company, state guarantees for bank loans, subsidized public loans to companies, safeguards to banks that channel state aid to the real economy and short-term export credit insurance. Further details on what kind of …
As the Covid-19 situation develops across Europe, governments and businesses are taking steps to protect the health and safety of their people and roll out precautionary measures. On 15 March, the Luxembourg government renewed calls for remote working as a means to enact “social distancing” and reduce contact between people, therefore limiting the spread of the infection. Luxembourg businesses have taken prompt action, with many larger players announcing new home-working policies. Behind the scenes, those in charge of IT functions and business continuity management are playing a leading role in rolling out large-scale homeworking schemes and enacting other measures to ensure business continuity. As businesses prepare, we’d like to share our pandemic planning which acts as a guide for issues that should be considered by all IT functions during a pandemic. Issues to be considered in IT and business continuity …
Luxembourg’s government is to overhaul financial support for organic farming in a bid to quadruple the proportion of land given over to such farming practices in the next five years. According to agricultural minister Romain Schneider (LSAP), the goal will be to adjust premiums, and boost investment aid to make it more advantageous financially for farms to convert and continue using organic practices. Currently, organic farming practices are used on 5% of the country’s agricultural land. The goal of the government’s organic farming action plan will be to increase this proportion to 20% by 2025. The remaining 80% should be operated according to sustainable criteria in economic, ecological and social terms, the minister said on Friday when he presented the plan to a parliamentary committee. Under the plan, state budgets will gradually increase, starting at €3.5m for 2020 and rising …
Wednesday marks 50 years to the day that Luxembourg air freight firm Cargolux was founded. Starting out with a single Canadair CL-44 swingtail freighter and a handful of staff, Cargolux’s inaugural flight, on 10 May 1970, saw it travel from Stockholm, ARN, to New York, JFK, to pick up iceberg lettuces and strawberries. Fifty years on and the airline flies to 75 destinations worldwide, has a fleet of 30 747-400/8 aircraft and employs over 2,000 people globally. It is also shipping more than just lettuce. Among the more unusual cargo it has carried are two beluga whales, racing horses and Ferraris. “It is a remarkable achievement for an all-cargo operator to celebrate 50 years in existence and I think I speak on behalf of the whole company when I say we are proud of how far our airline has come. …
On 4 February 2020, Franz Fayot joined the Luxembourg Government. He was appointed Minister of the Economy and Minister for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs. The Prime Minister, Minister of State, Xavier Bettel announced that H.R.H. the Grand Duke had honourably discharged Mr Fayot’s predecessor, the previous Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of the Economy and Minister of Health Étienne Schneider, upon his own request. After being sworn in, Franz Fayot officially took up his duties at the Ministry of the Economy. During a handover ceremony in the presence of all the employees of the Ministry of the Economy, the responsibilities previously discharged by Étienne Schneider were handed over to Franz Fayot.
The rate of companies in Luxembourg that were freshly formed was just about the EU27 average, but they employed relatively fewer people, according to data released this week. “In 2017, the number of new enterprise births in the European Union as a proportion of the total number of active EU enterprises stood at 9.3%,” Eurostat reported. The figure for Luxembourg was 9.2%. The EU countries with the highest “enterprise birth rate” were Lithuania (19.7%), Portugal (15.8%) and Slovakia (13.7%). The lowest proportions were recorded in Sweden (6.6%), Belgium (6.4%) and Greece (4.5%). Eurostat stated: “The employment generated by these newly created enterprises stood at 2.4% of total employment in the EU in 2017, ranging from 5.2% in Portugal to 1.2% in Germany and the Netherlands.” The job creation figure for Luxembourg, 1.7%, was below the EU average. Companies formed that …