Werner-Thorn-Flesch Government
The Luxembourg Socialist Workers' Party's share of the vote fell to 22,5%, its worst result since the war; it received 14 seats.
As to the Social Democratic Party, it did not manage to carve out a durable place on the political scene, and shrank to a tiny group with only two seats.
Ernest Muhlen was promoted to minister, while Jean-Claude Juncker joined the government as Secretary of State for Work and Social Security.
[1] On 3 December 1979, at a Franco-Germano-Luxembourgish meeting in Bonn, the German and Luxembourgish delegations requested that France reconsider its construction plans; this, however, proved to be in vain.
A growing number of MEPs expressed more and more openly their preference for Brussels, and demanded a single and definitive seat for their institution.
[1] However, such a decision was contrary to the treaty of the merging of the executives of 1965 which, in its appendix, stipulated that "the secretariat and its services remain installed in Luxembourg".
[1] On 23 and 24 March 1981, the European Council meeting in Maastricht decided to maintain the status quo with regards to the Communities' working locations.
[2] For a small state, development aid constituted an expedient means to assert itself at the international level and to give itself a positive image in the world.
[2] This attracted the attention of the European Commission,[2] which claimed that the state aid to the steel industry was incompatible with the competition rules of the Common Market.
[3] On 30 June 1983, the Chamber of Deputies passed a package of laws which came into force on 1 July and enabled the government to pursue the restructuring of the steel industry, in accordance with the Gandois report's recommendations.
[3] In parallel, the Luxembourgish government sought to cooperate with its Belgian counterpart in order to bring about collaborations and production exchanges.
[3] On 9 September 1983, a meeting took place in Luxembourg between Belgian and Luxembourgish ministers with the goal of defining a common strategy and organising the abandonment of certain sites.
[4] Pierre Werner asked Jelle Zylstra, the former governor of the Nederlandse Bank, to study the viability of a purely national monetary system.
[4] Unlike Hjalmar Schacht, who was consulted on the same question in the 1920s, Zylstra concluded that Luxembourg had the capacity to create a separate and independent Luxembourgish monetary entity.
[4] The IML assembled in one institution various powers which had previously been dispersed, such as the printing and management of banknotes and coins, monitoring the financial and banking sector, as well as representing the Grand Duchy in international bodies.
[4] The creation of the IML responded to the Luxembourgish government's desire to enter as a full-fledged partner in the decision-making instances which were put in place in the framework of the future European monetary union.
[4] While the development of the Euromarket was at the basis of the boom of the financial centre in the 1970s, private banking and off-balance-sheet operations generating commissions took the lead during the 1980s.
[5] At a conference of the members of the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva in 1977, Luxembourg was attributed five channels for direct satellite broadcasting.
[5] This led the Luxembourgish government to turn to an American expert, Clay T. Whitehead, who advocated the concept of a medium-power satellite and created a consulting group, Coronet Research.
[6] It established a contractual system which subjected the private schools to a monitoring of their curriculum and their teachers' qualifications, in return for state subsidies.
