Mars Di Bartolomeo (Luxembourg Socialist Workers' Party) has been President of the Chamber of Deputies of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg since 4 December 2013. He was Minister of Health and Social Security from 2004 to 2013 and represented the Luxembourg government in the Council of the European Union (also known as the EU Council of Ministers). The Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies comprises 60 directly elected members.
During the visit Mr Bartolomeo and his delegation held talks with the President of the National Council, Stéphane Rossini, and the President of the Council of States, Claude Hêche. In addition, the visiting delegation met the Head of the Federal Department of Home Affairs, Alain Berset, and the Federal Chancellor, Corina Casanova.
Swiss-Luxembourg relations
Switzerland and Luxembourg have excellent bilateral relations, as the two parties emphasised on several occasions during the talks. The two countries have much in common both at the economic and cultural levels: both have major financial centres and both have multilingual societies.
The two countries have conducted bilateral meetings on a regular basis in recent years, and the parliamentary presidents welcomed the good relations between the countries. Mr Bartolomeo had met the presidents of the two Swiss parliamentary chambers previously at the World Conference of Speakers of Parliament at the United Nations in New York from 31 August to 2 September 2015.
Presidency of the Council of the European Union
The subject of Switzerland’s relations with the EU were of course one of the main subjects of the talks, in particular since Luxembourg holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union from July until December 2015.
The Luxembourg delegation was interested to know how their Swiss interlocutors see the future of this relationship, in particular in light of the principle of free movement and with regard to institutional issues.
Swiss representatives will travel to Luxembourg this autumn to take part in the meetings of the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of the European Union (COSAC) that are taking place in Luxembourg and where Switzerland has observer status.