The Chamber is undermining democracy - in order to protect it

For the past year, an internal group within the Chamber of Deputies has been playing at being a would-be dictator: "We put ourselves in the shoes of an autocratic, illiberal party. What would we do in their place? We read the constitution and the various institutional rules and ask ourselves: How can I exploit this?" According to Director Marc Schiltz, this stress test of democratic institutions is the research unit's largest project to date. The key question is: where are the vulnerabilities in our institutions that could be exploited by an illiberal system?

Democracies are once again the exception

At first glance, the question seems far removed from reality. After all, Luxembourg is regarded as a prime example of a democratic country: the Grand Duchy currently ranks ninth on the Democracy Index. Even debates about the representativeness of the electorate compared to the country's population have no negative effect on this. Yet a battle is raging worldwide over this historically relatively modern form of government. Whilst liberal movements in countries such as Poland, Hungary, and Brazil are driving their nations towards democracy and participation, autocracies are becoming more common globally: In 2026, 56 per cent of the 137 states included in the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) were autocracies – the first time in 20 years that they have outnumbered democracies. This means that authoritarian forms of government are now the international norm.

"We were in a world where democracy had been growing steadily, and that has now reversed. Even in countries where, from a historical perspective, democracy had flourished. But also right in the heart of Europe, where people thought that something like this would be impossible, " says Chamber President Claude Wiseler (CSV).

In Germany, for instance, the AfD – whose leader, Alice Weidel, has announced, amongst other things, that she intends to abolish the Office for the Protection of the Constitution – now stands at 27 per cent nationwide. This makes it the strongest party in the Federal Republic, even though it has been monitored as a suspected anti-constitutional organisation and has even been classified as definitively far-right – and individual local branches still are. Under Donald Trump, the US became a 'flawed democracy' which, according to the Swedish V-Dem Institute, is "undergoing the most rapidly developing episode of autocratisation that the US has experienced in modern history".