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The media landscape in Luxembourg

Luxembourg's media landscape is strongly influenced by the country's multilingualism. Luxembourg has three official languages: German, French and Luxembourgish. Most newspapers, however, appear only in German or French; Luxembourgish is seldom used as a written language.

Blick auf die Altstadt
Foto: Wolfgang Staudt, Lizenz: Creative Commons by/2.0

Luxembourg's biggest daily is the Luxemburger Wort, which has close ties with the Christian Democrats (CSV). It belongs to the Saint-Paul publishing house, which is run by the Catholic Church and also publishes the free newspaper Point 24 and the La Voix du Luxembourg. The second-largest daily is the Tageblatt, which is close to the Social Democrats (LSAP) and is published along with the free paper L'Essentiel and the weekly Le Jeudi by the Editpress media group, owned by the OGB-L trade union. The left-liberal daily Le Quotidien and the liberal Lëtzebuerger Journal also deserve mention.

Among the weeklies, Woxx and D'Lëtzebuerger Land, both products of the Green movement, play significant roles. Owing to the country's small size the major newspapers often function simultaneously as local newspaper, national newspaper and party paper.

In the past five years all the print media have seen their circulations and advertising revenues decline. Two free newspapers, L'Essentiel and Point 24, are the second and third most widely read papers. The state ensures the diversity of the media landscape by providing annual subsidies to the tune of more than 7.6 million euros (2008).

Europe's leading private television and radio company, the RTL Group, has its headquarters in Luxembourg. Among the stations the company operates in Luxembourg are the television channel RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg, the radio station RTL Radio Lëtzebuerg as well as the country's most successful news portal RTL.lu. In 1991 RTL lost its state monopoly over audiovisual media. People living in the country can receive audiovisual media from Belgium, Germany and France.

The influential Portuguese-language weeklies Contacto and Correio as well as Radio Latina have sprung up for the numerous immigrants from Portugal and Cape Verde. Luxembourg's blogosphere does not play a significant role in everyday political debate.

This country's media at euro|topics