Luxembourg
The story
A founding EU member, Luxembourg ran essentially a four-party system until the 1980s — social democrats, Christian democrats, liberals and a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (KPL), which briefly held office right after the war before spending decades in opposition and losing its last independently elected seat in 1994. Dei Lenk (DL), founded in 1999 with the KPL among its founders, has since become the country's leading radical-left voice — socialist, anti-capitalist, softly eurosceptic, and calling for Luxembourg to leave NATO, which it blames in part for the war in Ukraine.
1987– · The ADR, a moderate radical right
The radical right has never been especially strong here. The Alternative Democratic Reform Party (ADR), founded in 1987 as a single-issue pension-reform party, is today the country's most eurosceptic party after DL — economically liberal, socially conservative, favouring Swiss-style direct democracy — but notably moderate on immigration and the EU compared with national-conservative parties elsewhere in Europe, and has never joined government despite continuous representation since 1989.
Fred Keup, party president from 2022 to 2024 and still leader of its parliamentary group, seen as more radical on immigration than his predecessors, was the informal face of the successful "no" campaign in a 2015 referendum on extending voting rights to non-citizens — an important political success for the ADR. He was succeeded in 2024 by Alexandra Schoos.
EP elections
Before 2024, only the mainstream CSV, DP, LSAP and Greens had ever won a Luxembourgish EP seat. That year ADR broke through with 11.8 percent — its best-ever national result — and joined the ECR group, though MEP Fernand Kartheiser was expelled from ECR in June 2025 after a Moscow trip, and now sits as a non-attached member. DL, affiliated with The Left group, has yet to win a seat.
DL
déi Lénk (The Left)
- Economics Left
- Social issues Progressive
- EU Soft euroscepticism
- Authoritarianism Low
ADR
Alternative Democratic Reform Party
- Economics Centre
- Social issues Conservative
- EU Soft euroscepticism
- Authoritarianism Low