ASTI, a non-profit organisation for migrant workers in Luxembourg, has issued a press release in which it addressed the Caritas embezzlement case - and the government's response to it.
ASTI described the embezzlement of €61 million at Caritas as "the most serious financial crime ever perpetrated in Luxembourg against a local entity".
Nevertheless, the non-profit argued that most civil society structures remain "robust" and "well managed", adding that social action benefits from mixed funding (public and private), which is "complementary" and "essential".
ASTI also went on to describe Caritas as "the voice of empathy, understanding, criticism of administrative violence, [and] care" over the years. The embezzlement scandal, however, "sounds the death knell for the structure," according to ASTI.
Reflecting on recent decisions, the organisation noted that the "executive" is taking over from the church at Caritas, "at full speed, by setting up monitoring bodies, not from civil society but from actors, most of them economic and close to the government".
"The head of the executive declares, on the one hand, that Caritas is not the State and, on the other hand, plays a decisive role in the hasty establishment of a replacement structure dedicated to it and dependent on it," commented ASTI, before warning of some of the perceived dangers of such actions: "This manoeuvre allows two things. First, it intends to legitimise the notion that social actors are only 'service providers'. It also intends to regulate and control communication (apart from that of the public prosecutor’s office that we are impatiently awaiting) and to avoid any 'slippage'".
ASTI added that it was important to remain "careful and vigilant", arguing that: "These extensions of an act of high financial delinquency lead us down a slope that risks causing undemocratic slippages that are difficult to control".
"For NGOs as well as for the general public, we must form a united front to avoid the continuation of an undesirable development", the press release continued. "Everyone, including the government, must become aware of the importance that civil society occupies and must continue to occupy as an essential guarantor of the stability and wealth of our democracies. Its values deserve to be protected no matter what."
