On Wednesday 19 June 2024, Luxembourg's Minister of Housing and Regional Planning, Claude Meisch, together with the Minister of Internal Affairs, Léon Gloden, and the Minister of the Environment, Climate and Biodiversity, Serge Wilmes, detailed the administrative simplification measures, as well as the new public-private partnership (PPP) for the creation of affordable housing, agreed by the government with a view to facilitating and accelerating the construction of housing in the Grand Duchy. 

The presentation is part of the action plan for boosting the creation of housing by reducing and simplifying procedures, announced by the government in the coalition agreement. It follows the first recovery package for housing and takes into account the reinforced dialogue with the construction sector and Syvcol (Union of Luxembourg Cities and Municipalities).

“Remove red tape where it does not bring added value to our society and our quality of life! The energy thus released will be invested in the priority areas: the planning and creation of attractive housing and living spaces,” said Minister Gloden when presenting the 40 measures. “Administrative simplification is a priority for this government, but it is not an end in itself. Each measure is designed to make it possible to build more and faster, while ensuring good urban planning and quality of life for all.”

Minister Wilmes stated: “We will considerably simplify and accelerate the essential procedures in terms of nature protection for projects and constructions in areas intended to be urbanised. Thanks to nature-based solutions, these efforts will improve the quality of life of residents. By promoting ecological elements, we will be able to strengthen the resilience of our neighbourhoods to the effects of climate change.”

The main lines of action for administrative simplification are as follows:

- Make general development plan (PAG) and specific development plan (PAP) procedures uniform;
- Remove the environmental assessment (EIA) for PAPs below 4 ha;
- Increase in the number of affordable housing in PAP “new neighbourhoods” (revision of art. 29bis);
- Simplification of construction standards and regulations;
- A national regulation on buildings;
- Fewer environmental studies and compensation measures, while guaranteeing a high level of protection of the environment and landscape;
- “Silence constitutes agreement” for individual authorisations in stages;
- Strengthening the assistance missions of administrations for construction stakeholders;
- Digitalisation of procedures.

“Accelerating procedures on the one hand, and bringing together all the skills in the construction of affordable housing on the other, this is the common objective of our approach,” underlined Minister Meisch. “To significantly increase supply, we need to tackle it together. It is important to me to offer a wide diversity of measures responding to the diversity of actors - public and private - while not losing sight of the objective of all our efforts. Namely, to quickly create this supply of housing which is sorely lacking today, so that particularly low-income households have access to decent housing.”

Summary of measures relating to the promotion of affordable housing in a “PPP” approach:

- Carrying out pilot projects on private land;
- Carrying out pilot projects on private land for employee housing;
- Carrying out pilot projects on public land:
- Procedures relating to the acquisition of housing for sale in the future state of completion (VEFA) by the State.