Top five stories you may have missed this week

International IT workers in Luxembourg feel left out despite demand

Information technology professional not speaking French say they are being left on the sidelines of a lucrative job market that has posted thousands of vacancies in Luxembourg.

Luxembourg’s national employment agency in February said more than 5,000 IT positions remained unfilled in 2022 - almost three times more than in 2015 - with jobs for IT developers accounting for more than a third of these unfilled positions. Yet, non-French speaking IT specialists struggle to secure positions despite the demand.

“Not being able to speak French has shut many doors for me,” Nima Jehan Mothafar, a data scientist, who earned her master’s degree in computer science from the University of Luxembourg, told the Luxembourg Times.

Luxembourg notaries, brokers lay off staff as property fallout widens

The fallout of Luxembourg’s property market downturn has reached the country’s notaries and real estate agencies as some firms have had to lay off staff due to a drop in transactions, but the government’s housing measures are starting to reverse the tide.

Without their stamp of approval, no real estate transaction goes through. When Luxembourg’s property market was booming, business was equally good for the country’s notaries. However, as fewer properties are sold and prices fell, some notaries have been caught in the crossfire.

“It particularly affects firms that work together with property developers ,” said Martine Schaeffer, who runs her own notary firm. She could not say just how many people have been laid off in the sector. She herself had heard of between six and eight staffers.

None of Luxembourg’s 36 notary firms has had to close as they do not solely focus on real estate transactions, she said in a phone interview. Notaries signed off on 30% fewer transactions last year compared to the year before, she said.

Climate change communication between moralising and motivating citizens

Prime Minister Luc Frieden in his first speech in November said he wants to “inspire, not annoy” Luxembourg citizens with “ambitious but pragmatic” climate policies. That is exactly what voters want to hear but won’t be enough to generate change, say experts and Greens.

How we talk about climate matters, said UK-based climate psychologist Caroline Hickman told the Luxembourg Times. While Frieden’s message is reassuring, “it’s like telling the population a bedtime story so they don’t have nightmares,” she said.

“Luxembourg’s leader is sending out a message saying ‘because we are special, we don’t need to do anything about climate change’,” Hickman said. That aligns with large industries downplaying the urgency and reality of climate change, she added.

Luxembourg’s slump in house prices by far the biggest in EU

Luxembourg registered the steepest drop in property prices in the European Union last year, but the slump has started levelling off, according to data released by Eurostat and real estate agency atHome.

Property prices fell by 14.4% between the fourth quarter of 2023 and the same period in 2022, Eurostat said on Thursday. That means the drop in Luxembourg’s real estate market was the steepest in the EU, a long way ahead of Germany’s 7.1% and Finland’s 4.4% falls.

In the EU, average house prices remained steady while in the eurozone they declined by 1.1% between Q4 2023 and Q4 2022.

Luxembourg tyre manufacturer denies safety allegations

Tyre maker Goodyear has denied allegations in a report by French newspaper Le Monde that defective truck tyres manufactured in Luxembourg were to blame for a series of accidents between 2012 and 2014, the company said on Thursday.

A series of articles in the French daily newspaper alleged that the company compensated dozens of accident victims in the 2010s while demanding their silence.

The report quotes from internal emails and secret spreadsheets, documents that were given to the newspaper by two sources, according to the exposé entitled L’affaire Goodyear.

The article claimed that Goodyear “is accused of failing to warn the public about possible manufacturing defects affecting tens of thousands of tyres manufactured in Luxembourg” which had been at the cause of “numerous accidents”.