Luxembourg's EU institutions, and how to get inside

Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg share the role of EU capital, and you feel it the moment you reach Kirchberg. On a plateau that was farmland barely sixty years ago now stand the Court of Justice, the European Investment Bank and a long list of offices employing more than 14,000 people. For a visitor the interesting part is that two of these places are free to visit, and one of them is a working court.

What exactly is based there

The government’s official portal lists the institutions and bodies based in the country. Top of the list come the EU’s Court of Justice and its Court of Auditors, followed by the European Investment Bank, together with its European Investment Fund and the European Parliament’s Secretariat-General. The Commission has several directorates-general there, among them Eurostat and the Publications Office, and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office has operated from Luxembourg since 1 June 2021. The Translation Centre, EuroHPC, the European Stability Mechanism and the Euratom Supply Agency complete the list, plus the EFTA Court and the Court of Appeal of the Unified Patent Court.

One detail surprises almost everyone. EU ministers don’t only meet in Brussels. The Council of the EU holds its sessions in Luxembourg in April, June and October.

Why Luxembourg of all places?

It goes back to 1952. On the night of 24 to 25 July that year it was decided to place the ECSC High Authority, the coal and steel body from which the EU grew, in Luxembourg on a provisional basis. That provisional seat was the start of everything now found in Kirchberg. There’s a neat logic to it, since Robert Schuman, whose plan led to the ECSC, was born in 1886 in the capital’s Clausen district. Where that fits in the country’s story is in history of Luxembourg.

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Can you get into the Court of Justice?

Yes, and it’s what I’d do. Oral hearings are public. They’re generally held on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays during the Court’s working periods, usually start at 9:30 and need no registration. Turn up at least 15 minutes early at the entrance on rue Charles Léon Hammes, go through security and show a passport, ID card or driving licence to get a visitor badge. Seating is limited and can’t be reserved. The Court’s judicial calendar online shows which cases are heard each week. Many hearings are also streamed on the Curia website and stay online for 30 days, handy if your trip doesn’t include a Tuesday to Thursday. Visitors with reduced mobility are advised to use the entrance on rue Fort Niedergrünewald, and the Court asks you to contact it in advance if you need assistance.

There are two other ways in. The Court’s visits service runs free tours of its art collection, built from works donated or lent by member states and displayed in buildings designed by Dominique Perrault. Tours run in English, French or German, for up to 20 people, and you register two working days ahead. And the Luxembourg City Tourist Office runs guided tours outside court hours, on weekdays from 17:30 and at weekends, which need booking four weeks in advance.

The Europa Experience and a walk round Kirchberg

The other place open to everyone is the Europa Experience on avenue J. F. Kennedy. It’s a free visitor centre about the EU, open six days a week, Sundays excepted, between 10:00 and 18:00, and it asks for ID. Over Christmas it shuts between 24 December 2026 and 2 January 2027.

Inside, according to visitluxembourg, there’s 2,000 m² of multimedia space, with a 360-degree cinema screening a film about Europe on a loop, interactive stations, virtual reality and a role-play in which you act as an MEP for a few hours, the last one by booking only. Everything is available in the EU’s 24 official languages, with subtitles, audio description in the cinema and step-free access. Groups of more than 16 book separately. I’d give it an hour and do it before the Court, because it hands you the map of what you’ll see outside.

Outside, Place de l’Europe is the stage for all of this. Ricardo Bofill laid it out in 2004 over what had been a car park, paved it in black and conceived it as a tribute to the institutions’ presence in the city. And at the Schuman roundabout, Robert Lentz’s 1966 monument honours the man behind the plan with three steel girders topped by six spikes, the six founding states of the Coal and Steel Community, and an excerpt from his speech of 9 May 1950 cut into the stone.

That fills a morning, and the district does the rest. The official portal notes that the country’s tallest building is the Court’s third tower, opened in September 2019, that its first skyscraper was the Alcide de Gasperi tower, in 1966, and that the Robert Schuman building’s hemicycle housed the first directly elected European Parliament in 1979. The rest of the district, with the Philharmonie and Mudam, is in Kirchberg.

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Getting there, and what to bring

From the old town the easiest way up is tram T1, which crosses the Red Bridge and stops at Europaparlament, Philharmonie / Mudam and Coque, or the Kirchberg funicular from the Pfaffenthal. Neither costs a cent. Bring your passport, because both the Court and the Europa Experience will ask for ID. What it means for a British visitor that Luxembourg is in the EU, Schengen and the euro is summed up in is Luxembourg in the EU.

If you would rather have a local show you round, book a guided tour in Luxembourg and choose by the reviews.

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