Luxembourg Times

Politicians across the political spectrum looked to be losing favour with voters in an opinion poll published on Tuesday, with long-reigning champion Xavier Bettel still at the top of the list while Prime Minister Luc Frieden trails behind in 12th place. Frieden in a December edition of the Politmonitor survey became the first sitting prime minister to drop out of the top ten.

State-owned lender SNCI has posted a record net profit of €115.1 million in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 118%, primarily because of reversals in financial valuations in its portfolio. The investment bank had put aside €41 million in 2024 to cover potential financial losses and writedowns, and that cash was liberated last year.

Nigel Farage said he was standing down as a British member of parliament and will stand in the resulting by-election in his parliamentary constituency of Clacton, citing the opportunity “to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment.” The shock announcement comes after Farage faced increasing scrutiny over undeclared gifts he received in the run-up to the 2024 general election, when he was elected to the House of Commons for the first time.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office announced on Tuesday a wide-ranging investigation into suspected benefit fraud involving hundreds of migrants. Investigations have been underway since summer 2023, with the Directorate-General for Immigration at the centre of the probe, the statement from the Public Prosecutor’s Office said. The allegations include corruption, influence-peddling, money laundering, forgery of documents, misuse of documents, subsidy fraud and the smuggling of migrants.

From a distance, it looks like a routine police presence on the E411. Up close, however, motorists discover that the patrol vehicle is nothing more than a cardboard cut-out: a simple but apparently effective way of encouraging safer driving. A video showing what appears to be a police checkpoint near roadworks on the E411 motorway in Belgium’s Luxembourg province has attracted widespread attention on social media.

Marine Le Pen can enter the race to become France’s next president after judges confirmed her embezzlement conviction on appeal but handed her a reprieve on an election ban. Presiding Judge Michèle Agi confirmed Le Pen’s conviction, saying that she and several others at the National Rally party misused European Union funds earmarked to pay for aides. But the appellate judges reduced her ban to 15 months, thus paving the way for her to lead her party into the next election.

The underlying challenges facing Luxembourg’s housing market remain unchanged, despite recent signs of improvement in the sector, Prime Minister Luc Frieden said in a parliamentary reply on Monday. “The fundamental situation has not changed. Demand for housing remains high and supply remains low,” Frieden wrote in response to LSAP MPs Mars Di Bartolomeo and Yves Cruchten, who had asked what had led him to adopt a more optimistic tone on the market’s recovery compared with a year earlier.

The European Central Bank is imposing additional so-called haircuts on collateral that poses a climate risk, to guard against possible losses. The ECB faces risks from holding bonds issued by companies with large carbon footprints as the economy transitions away from fossil fuels, Dirk Broeders, senior lead financial risk expert, and Daniel Gybas, principal financial markets expert, said in a blog post published on Tuesday.

The Hôpitaux Robert Schuman (HRS) group is preparing for the gradual expansion of its outpatient activities at Cloche d’Or. The hospital group already operates a radiology centre, opened in autumn 2025, in the Zénith building at the Cloche d’Or shopping centre. The centre comprises an MRI scanner, CT scanner and mammography facility. Two ophthalmic operating theatres are due to come into operation in September or October, also in the Zénith building.

German breweries are producing more nonalcoholic beer than ever to cater to increasingly health-conscious consumers, highlighting a shift in drinking habits that is upending the industry. Output of nonalcoholic beer and nonalcoholic mixed drinks containing beer rose by 6.5% to 616 million liters (163 million gallons) in 2025, the Federal Statistics Office reported on Tuesday.