Gäichel XIII: Frieden and De Wever Co-Chair the 13th Joint Luxembourg-Belgium Cabinet

Prime Ministers Luc Frieden of Luxembourg and Bart De Wever of Belgium co-chaired the thirteenth joint meeting of the Luxembourg and Belgian governments on 16 March 2026 at the Hostellerie de la Gaichel, near the border between the two countries. The Gäichel format, launched in 2004, gathers ministerial counterparts from both governments for a single working day — a length that demands real prioritisation and produces, by tradition, a joint declaration of substantive deliverables.

What the format does

It compresses bilateral coordination across justice, economy, mobility, education, defence and energy into a single calendar day. Counterpart ministers meet in pairs, with the two PMs steering the macro agenda. The deliverables are documented in a joint declaration agreed at the end of the day, which then becomes the working programme for the bilateral agenda over the following 12-18 months.

The 2026 priorities

The Gäichel XIII declaration emphasised four files. Cross-border worker arrangements — telework allowances, social-security coordination, unemployment-benefit rules under the 2026 changes — given the ~50,000 Belgian residents who commute to Luxembourg daily. Mobility and rail capacity, particularly the Luxembourg-Brussels corridor and the Athus-Meuse line. Energy — joint procurement, electricity interconnection and the residual question of Tihange and Cattenom risk management. And Schengen enforcement — a shared Belgian-Luxembourg position against the rolling reauthorisation of internal border checks.

Why this format works

Three reasons. The geography is unusually integrated: the Belgian Province of Luxembourg shares language, family and economic ties with the Grand Duchy that no national border can fully express. The political alignments do not always agree but the institutional working relationships, sustained over thirteen Gäichel cycles since 2004, have produced an unusual depth of mutual understanding among civil servants. And the Greater Region framework — which adds France's Lorraine, Germany's Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate to the Belgium-Luxembourg core — gives Gäichel decisions immediate practical traction.

Where De Wever brings something different

The Belgian PM's N-VA-led federal government has been more openly Eurosceptic in tone than its predecessors, but Luxembourg-Belgium bilateral cooperation has continued without disruption. De Wever's interest in fiscal discipline and administrative reform aligns more easily with Frieden's CSV-DP coalition than with some of De Wever's own Walloon counterparts. The 2026 declaration reflects that working compatibility.

What to watch through 2027

Three concrete files to track. Whether the joint position on Schengen enforcement produces results in Brussels — the German border-check decision in September 2026 will be the first test. Whether rail-corridor commitments translate into actual capacity expansion, particularly Luxembourg-Brussels and Liège-Luxembourg. And whether the Gäichel format absorbs the Walloon regional government as a full participant on cross-border worker files where the Federal level alone is insufficient.