A milestone birthday, new party leadership

When the Democratic Party meets this Sunday for its party congress at the Tramsschapp in Limpertsberg, it will also be celebrating its 70th anniversary – there will be no special birthday party.

The predecessor of today's DP is the Liberal League, founded in 1904, before the Radical Liberal Party was constituted 30 years later and the Groupement Patriotique et Démocratique was founded in June 1945, from which the Democratic Party finally emerged in April 1955.

In contrast to the LSAP, which is the only one of the three major parties that has never been able to win the office of prime minister in its long history, the DP has already been head of government twice: from 1974 to 1979 with Gaston Thorn, and from 2013 to 2023 with Xavier Bettel.

Since November 2023, the DP has once again been in a lifetime partnership with the CSV, which also provides the Prime Minister, Luc Frieden. Xavier Bettel has been Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister since then.

However, when the DP last formed a coalition with the CSV from 1999 to 2004 – the head of government at the time was CSV supremo Jean-Claude Juncker – it lost five seats after the elections on 13 June 2004: an unparalleled disaster that left the Democratic Party downright traumatised and which it naturally never wants to experience again.