Agefi Luxembourg - mai 2026

AGEFI Luxembourg 40 Mai 2026 Droit & Travail Par Dominique de la BARRE, La Nouvelle Ligne * L emois dernier, les pairs héré­ ditaires de laChambre des Lords y ont tenu leur der­ nière apparition au seind’une ins­ titutionque leurs ancêtres avaient fondée il y a huit siècles. On aura déjà entendu cent fois les rai­ sons invoquées par le premier ministre, Sir Keith Starmer ; il s’agit de lire les signes des temps, de récompenser lemé­ rite, et de mettre fin à un système aussi arbitraire qu’aléatoire fondé sur la seule naissance, jugé incompatible avec une démocratie moderne. LaChambre des Lords, d’une réforme à une autre Déjà en 1958, le gouvernement MacMil­ lan fait voter le Life Peerages Act, qui avait introduitleconceptdutitredebaronàvie à titre personnel et donc non transmissi­ ble. Aux quelques 850 pairs héréditaires, sont venusdepuis s’ajouter lespairs àvie, aunombrede1600environactuellement, qui, certes méritoires, doivent leur pro­ motion aux bonnes relations qu’ils ont entretenu avec le gouvernement du jour, qui dans les faitsdécidede l’octroi de leur titre.En1999,legouvernementtravailliste de Tony Blair avait déjà réduit le nombre de pairs à héréditaires à 92 ; ce sont ceux­ là qui quittent la chambre haute pour de bon aujourd’hui. Pourtant avec eux quelque chose se perd. Si laChambre des communesmatérialise enquelquesorteladimensionhorizontale dusystèmepolitiquebritannique,puisque tantles MPs queleursélecteurssontenvie aujourd’hui,lespairshéréditairesenincar­ naientladimensionverticaleetl’inséraient dans la l’histoire de leur pays. Ainsi, en guise d’exemple, la création du titre de Baron de Ros, dont Peter Trevor Maxwell est l’actuel 27 e titulaire, remonte à 1264, avant même l’établissement des Communes. La nouvelleChambre des Lords, la chambre des copains Iln’estpasanodindesoulignerqu’ontrou­ vaitdavantagedemembresindépendants de tout parti à la chambre haute qu’aux Communes.Sileprinciped’électionsàin­ tervalles réguliers oblige l’élu à rendre compte à ses électeurs et donc d’agir dans unsensdontilpensequ’illeurplaira,l’ab­ sence de fonction élective peut conférer une véritable indépendance d’esprit et de parole. Les Lords, qui agissent dans le temps long dans lequel s’inscrit leur pro­ pre histoire familiale, ne s’en sont pas pri­ vésetontsusemontrercritiquesdesgou­ vernementstantconservateursquetravail­ listes.Désormaisilnerestequedespairsà vie ; sans qu’ils aient nécessairement dé­ mérité, ils incarnent chacunune forme de népotisme, que personne désormais ne viendra tempérer. De l’avis de La Nouvelle Ligne , la longévité d’une institution est souvent le gage de quelque chosequimarche ; l’Église catho­ lique et le Trône du Chrysanthème en fournissentdeuxautresexemples.Enl’oc­ currence,lespairshéréditairesontsujouer au fil des siècles un rôle social important au RoyaumeUni, en dépit d’un pouvoir politique sans cesse réduit à partir du XVIII e siècle. Huit siècles durant, les Lords héréditaires ont su porter la voix face au pouvoir du roi, du premier ministre et de la volonté populaireportéepar lamajoritéd’unmo­ ment. La Nouvelle Ligne regrettera leur si­ lence imposé. *DominiquedelaBarrepublieleblogLaNouvelleLigne (https://lanouvelleligne.com/ ) après une longue carrière dans labanqueàLuxembourgetenSuisse. Adieu, Milord Lessons from Poundbury, Luxembourg and Bhutan on reimagining sustainable urbanism W hat does a truly sustaina­ ble city look like? The question has haunted ar­ chitects, planners, and policyma­ kers for decades—and grown more urgent with climate change and increased human populations. From the intimate streets of aDor­ set market town to the current construction sites of globalised su­ burbs and the forested foothills of theHimalayas, this article traces a journey through the past, present, and possible futures of the green city. It is not a technical inquiry alone. It is a holistic one: about how societies choose to live, build, and coexist (1) . Yesterday: LéonKrier and the legible city Postwarcityplanning,accordingtoLéon Krier (1946–2025),wasbrokenbya single catastrophic idea: “zoning”. By rigidly separating living, working, and leisure into monofunctional districts, 20thcen­ tury planning severed the organic tissue of urban life. The consequences are widely visible: car dependency, social atomisation, andenvironmentshostile to human scale. Functional segregation did not merely fragment space — it eroded the social continuity that had historically defined European cities. Krier’s response took shape in Poundbury, the new town in Dorset (England)commissionedin1988byKing Charles when he was Prince of Wales. Conceived as a radical departure from modernist orthodoxy, Poundbury became a living laboratory for an urban­ ism rooted in history yet oriented towards contemporary needs. Divided into four walkable quarters, each sur­ rounding a civic “agora”, it integrates housing, shops, offices and green spaces within a tenminutewalk—embodying Krier’sconvictionthateverythingneeded for daily life shouldbe accessible on foot, without recourse to the car. Streets vary inwidthandare curved, deliberatelycre­ ating danger to slow traffic; parking is tucked into landscaped courtyards; road markings and signs are absent, asserting the priority of pedestrians over cars. The town isbuilt arounda coherent set of principles, includingusingpreindustrial proportions to mirror those of historic cities and avoiding the “monstrous growth” of modernist megacities. Krier insisted on structuring cities through streets and squares as primary elements, rather than isolated buildings or abstract zoning diagrams. Urbanism, in his view, must be legible, humane, and rooted in place. Such ideas were initially ridiculed —as recalled by Luxembourgbased ar­ chitect Colum Mulhern, who collabo­ rated with Krier on the project — yet many have since entered mainstream planning discourse. In this respect, Poundbury’s principles have influenced UK policy, notably the Manual for Streets (UK Department of Transport, 1 st edition 2007), whichprioritiseswalka­ ble, humanscale neighbourhoods. Today: The construction sector’s reckoning The numbers are stark. Construction accountsforapproximately40%ofglobal CO₂ emissions, 40–50% of resource con­ sumption, and 40%of waste production. For a sector this large, incremental improvement is insufficient — and a growing body of practitioners and researchers is saying so explicitly. The dominant response over the past decade has been technological: energyefficient design, renewable materials, certification systems, circular business models, mod­ ular construction. These approaches represent genuine progress. But asChristianSchulz, headof the Geography and Spatial Planning Department at the University of Luxembourg,argues,theyriskoptimising a fundamentally flawed model rather thanquestioningit.Hisalternativeis“suf­ ficiency” — a shift in emphasis from “building better” to “building less”. In practice, this means using simpler, low­ tech materials; promoting coliving and collective housing to reduce percapita resource use; andprioritising the adapta­ tion of existing structures over new con­ struction entirely. The data supports his argument. The EU Whole Life Carbon Roadmap (EU Commis­ sion,2024)estimatesthatadaptingexisting buildings andsharing living spaces could avoidtheequivalentof120%ofannualad­ ditional floorspace from new residential construction. Europe’s widespread va­ cancyandunderusepointtomisallocation rather than shortage—a structural argu­ mentthatsitsawkwardlywiththecontin­ uedpace of newdevelopment. Two movements push this logic to its conclusions.The HouseEurope! unsuccess­ ful initiative (EU citizen initiative, 2025) called for the creation of incentives that make the renovation and transfor­ mation of existing buildings the new normandacommonpath. NonExtractive Architecture goes a step further arguing that the profession must abandon its extractive logic across materials, labour, and land. The idea is to reset the archi­ tect’s role from “creator of new objects” to “caretaker of existing systems”, intro­ ducing figures such as “maintenance architects”, “building surgeons” and “environmental housekeepers”! For theEuropean Investment Bank (EIB), these debates are extremely relevant, given its positioning as the EU’s Climate Bank, supporting green finance. As Tanguy Desrousseaux, Director at the EIB, noted, urban infrastructure projects account for roughly 20% of the institu­ tion’s annual lending — approximately €20 billion. Half of all EIB financing now supports climate action, with urban regeneration, building renovation, and lowcarbon infrastructure as core priori­ ties. On the technical advisory side, the EUCitiesMission and the Climate City Gap Fund extend this ambition to 100 cities across and beyond Europe. The message from the EIB is clear: green cities are not a niche concern, but a struc­ tural investment priority. Tomorrow: Bhutan’s quiet experiment The Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC) has a unique approach to city concept. Announced by King Jigme Khesar NamgyelWangchuck inDecember 2023, it is being built in Bhutan’s southcentral foothills—a country of fewer than amil­ lion people that has spent six decades in pursuit of holistic development rather than the logic of rapid economic devel­ opment. Bhutan’s governance frame­ work, shaped by the philosophy of Gross National Happiness (GNH), has always treated environmental conservation, cul­ tural continuity, and governance stan­ dards as preconditions for development ratherthanitscasualties.GMCisthemost concentratedexpressionofthatwageryet —granted its own legislative and execu­ tive powers by royal charter, it operates asaspecialadministrativeregionwiththe institutional autonomy to experiment in waysaconventionalmunicipalitycannot. Crucially, this autonomy is temporaryby design: under the socalled Diamond Strategy ,GMCand the rest of the country will begin reintegrating starting 2045, with both expected to reemerge as one and transformed. The ultimate purpose of the GMC, born from the vision of the Kingof Bhutan, is to transformthe coun­ try in its whole and provide resilient answers to the current regional chal­ lenges such as climate change, sustain­ able economic growth, and peace. According to Tsheten Wangyel, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Royal Bhutanese Embassy in Brussels, what that experi­ mentlookslikeinpracticebeginswiththe land itself. Three of Bhutan’s national parkswillbedirectlyconnectedtothecity through biological corridors, making wildlife movement and humanwildlife coexistencestructuralfeaturesoftheurban plan rather thanafterthoughts. 80%of the city’s area is aspired to be designated as green space —well above the 60% forest cover already mandated by the national constitution. Flood management will work with historical water processes rather than suppress them, avoiding the hardened riverbanks and engineered channels that have failed cities elsewhere (this is also to relate with the melting of theHimalayanheights). Buildingswill be capped at lowrise, con­ structedfromlocalstone,timber,andbam­ boo,andtheentirecitywillrunonrenew­ able energy notably driven by hydroelec­ tricpower.Theeconomicfocusspansspir­ itual, health and wellness infrastructure, education, forestry & agritechnology, greenenergy, finance&digital assets, avi­ ation & logistics and tourism — sectors chosenforlongtermresilienceratherthan shortterm yield. While other smart cities tend to accelerate urban metabolism, GMCasaninnovationhubforsustainable industries and responsible investments proposestointegratepedestrianlife,reflec­ tion, and ecological coexistence into its throughput.Whetherthismodelcantrav­ el beyond its very specific cultural and geographical context is anopenquestion. Building otherwise: The green city, past, present and future Poundbury, the “sufficiencymovement”, and GMC are not easy bedfellows. Krier was a cultural conservativewho drewon classical European urbanism; Schulz advocatesanearmoratoriumonnewcon­ struction;Gelephu is a royal vision rooted in GNH, Vajrayana Buddhism, sustain­ ability and innovation. The tensions between them are real and should not be papered over. And yet a common thread runs through all three — one that is less about technique than about priority. The first is environmental. Each model treats land,materials, andecological sys­ tems as finite realities to work with, not obstacles to overcome. Whether it is Krier’s insistence on humanscale den­ sity, Schulz’s call to use what already exists, orGMC’s biological corridors and intact flood plains — the underlying impulse is the same: the natural world is not a backdrop tourbandevelopment, but its foundation. The second is human. Krier argued that a city should be built for people to live in, not to be looked at — that architec­ ture’s first obligation is to the inhabitant, not the plan. The same conviction reap­ pears, differently inflected, in each case: in the slow streets and civic squares of Poundbury, in the sufficiency move­ ment’s challenge to the assumption that more space equals better livingandcom­ bating green gentrification, in GMC’s approach grounded in GNH principles targetingwellbeing and community. Three lessons follow for those who finance,develop,orregulatethebuiltenvi­ ronment.First, renovationandadaptivereuse arenolongeralternativestrategies —theyare becoming the default, and investment frameworks that still privilege new con­ struction risk mispricing both carbon exposure and longterm asset value. Second, sufficiencyisnotausterity :reducing percapita land and resource use while improvingliveabilityisadesignchallenge with real commercial implications. Third, institutional experimentation — GMC’s most distinctive feature — may offer a model for how special legal and regulatory frameworks could be struc­ tured to allowgenuine innovation. William Lindsay SIMPSON President of the Conférence SaintYves (www.csy.lu ) 1) This article is based on the event “Green cities and sustainableurbanism–yesterday,todayandtomorrow” organised at the National Library on 23 April 2026 by the Conference SaintYves and the Luxembourg AssociationforEnvironmentalLaw,withcontributions fromTanguyDesrousseaux,ColumMulhern,Christian Schulz, and TshetenWangyel. The green city: past, present and future