introduction

In the same way as in neighbouring West Germany and Belgium, and for similar reasons, the identification of a liberal party in Luxemburg presents no difficulty, the Demokratesch Partei qualifying by virtually any criterion. Of all the parties considered in this volume, the DP is by far the smallest in absolute terms but this has not prevented it from becoming one of the more important. In recent years especially, both domestically and internationally, it has become one of the most highly-influential liberal parties in Europe. For this reason alone, no study of present-day liberalism in Western Europe could be complete without reference to the Luxemburg Demokratesch Partei.

This influential position is due to a number of factors, of which the most important are probably the DP's almost uniquely high (for a European liberal party) vote percentage; its regular participation in government (and hence from time to time the presidency of the EC council of ministers); its rather strategic position virtually in the ideological centre of European liberalism; and, not the least important, the personality of several of its leaders since the Second World War, most notably Gaston Thorn.

Yet, as an organised party political force, liberalism was a distinctly late developer in the Grand Duchy, the country's first proper liberal party not emerging until as late as 1925 or so, even though both as a philosophy and as a political tradition, liberalism has had a long history in Luxemburg.