Juncker-Polfer Ministry

The Juncker–Polfer Ministry was the government of Luxembourg between 7 August 1999 and 31 July 2004. It was led by, and named after, Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker and Deputy Prime Minister Lydie Polfer.

The Juncker-Polfer government represented a coalition between Juncker's Christian Social People's Party (CSV) and Polfer's Democratic Party, which had been elected the largest and second-largest parties respectively in the general election of 1999.

Until 1999, the CSV had been in coalition with the Luxembourg Socialist Workers' Party (LSAP). The Juncker-Polfer government came to an end with the general election of 2004, after which the LSAP once again joined the CSV in coalition and the Democratic Party returned to opposition.

At the election of 13 June 1999, the two parties which had governed the country since 1984 suffered significant losses. The CSV now had 19 seats in the Chamber, down from 21 in 1994, while the LSAP received 13 seats, down from 17. The Democratic Party managed to increase its number of Deputies to 15, up from 12 in 1994.

The elections confirmed the growth of small parties at the expense of the three largest parties (CSV, DP and LSAP. The Aktiounskomitee fir Demokratie a Rentegerechtegkeet received 7 seats, the Greens (Déi Gréng) received 5, and The Left (Déi Lénk) received one.

The Grand Duke charged the Prime Minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, with forming a new government. Coalition negotiations were started between the CSV and the DP. On 7 August 1999 the new CSV-DP government was sworn in.

European questions continued to dominated Luxembourg's foreign policy. The period from 1999 to 2004 was devoted to enlargement of the European Union and institutional reforms that went with it. On 16 April 2003 in Athens, 10 new member states (Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Malta) signed the treaty of accession. Their admission came into force on 1 May 2004. The European Union now counted 455 million residents. This evolution confirmed the government's conviction that despite its small size, Luxembourg had to make all the more efforts to impose its presence on the international scene as the European Union grew.

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