People in Luxembourg live longer than almost anyone in the EU and longer than all their cross-border neighbours, the latest Eurostat data show. But because roughly half the country's workers commute in from regions that live shorter lives, the longevity gap maps an imbalance as much as a triumph.
The Grand Est Region unveiled at Metz station on 4 May 2026 the first of 16 double-decker trains now running on the Metz-Thionville-Luxembourg line. Each five-car Z26500 set seats 554 passengers, up from 313, and has been cleared to cross into Luxembourg since 29 April. The plan lifts peak-hour capacity toward 21,000 seats by 2030, with Luxembourg co-funding a new Metz-area workshop.
Luxembourg's economy runs on cross-border workers - 231,519 of them, nearly half the salaried workforce. For 2026, two separate thresholds govern their telework: a 34-day-a-year tax tolerance, now identical for France, Germany and Belgium, and a separate social-security ceiling of just under 50%. Mixing them up can be expensive.
A German court ruled that a suspicion-free identity check on a Saarland law professor returning from Luxembourg was unlawful, finding Berlin's internal border controls insufficiently justified under Schengen rules. Two days later, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt lifted fixed checks on the Luxembourg frontier, easing months of delays for 50,000 daily commuters — while denying the verdict drove the decision and vowing to appeal.
France has opened the public inquiry for the A31bis north project between Richemont and the Luxembourg border. Cross-border workers, residents and businesses can submit comments until 27 June 2026.
France and Luxembourg again failed to lift the 34-day cap on tax-free teleworking for French cross-border workers at December's intergovernmental commission. France wants a 40% threshold plus revenue-sharing; Luxembourg offers only 25% and refuses retrocession. With talks pushed to late 2026, more than 120,000 frontaliers stay stuck on a rule that competitors abandoned years ago.
Luxembourg, the German Länder of Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate, and France's Grand Est say a joint study has confirmed a direct Luxembourg-Saarbrücken-Mannheim railway is feasible "in principle," while flagging technical, legal and financial hurdles that push a regular service to the mid-2030s at the earliest. With 276,360 cross-border workers crossing daily in 2024, the partners are weighing shorter-term fixes too.
Luxembourg could face a major administrative and budget shift if new EU rules require it to pay unemployment benefits for former cross-border workers.
On 13 March 2026 in Esch-sur-Alzette, Minister Claude Meisch and Moselle Prefect Pascal Bolot inaugurated a new Franco-Luxembourg working group to coordinate housing, transport, demographics and resource preservation across the border.