Residence in Luxembourg: eight days for the report, three months for the registration

Luxembourg is a country of communes. Whoever comes to live there has little to do with the state and everything with the town hall — and that town hall has two deadlines.

Clock one: eight days

Within eight days of moving into your home you go to the population office, the bureau de la population, of your commune. That is the déclaration d'arrivée, and it applies to everyone who settles in Luxembourg, EU citizen or not.

You bring: your passport or identity card, and proof that you really live there — a lease, the written consent of the owner or the occupant, or the deed of sale. Ask straight away for a certificat de résidence, because that paper is asked for by every next counter, from the CNS to the SNCA.

If you later move within Luxembourg, you make the same report again: at the commune you leave and at the commune where you arrive.

Clock two: three months

Within three months of arrival you make the déclaration d'enregistrement at the same commune. That is Luxembourg's implementation of the European rule that after three months you must have a ground of residence. You bring:

• your passport or identity card;
• your lease;
• the proof of your ground of residence: an employment contract, a business permit or an enrolment at an educational institution — or, with own means, proof of sufficient income and of healthcare cover;
• for family members the marriage, partnership or birth certificate.

For pensioners the proof of income is the pension decision or a bank statement, and the proof of cover the S1 from the CAK. Guichet.lu says expressly that the requirement is that you "don't become a burden on the social assistance system" — a Dutch pension is amply enough for that.

The registration certificate

You get the attestation d'enregistrement: a paper with your name and your address, without photo and without nationality, valid indefinitely. It isn't a residence permit — your right of residence comes from EU law — but it's the proof that you have it, and the bank and the tax office ask for that.

Why the home comes before everything

The order is compelling here. Without a home no proof of residence, without proof no report within eight days, without a report no registration declaration, no registration with the CNS, no plates. And the Luxembourg housing market is tight and expensive: start months before your departure, count on a deposit of two or three months' rent, and know that a temporary address through a platform usually doesn't convince the commune.

After five years

After five years of uninterrupted legal residence you're entitled as an EU citizen to permanent residence. You apply for the certificate of that not at the commune but at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration, and the registration certificate from the first years is then the proof of your years.