EU’s Luxembourg staff headcount grows to almost 15,000

The number of EU staff in Luxembourg expanded again in 2025, bringing the total to just under 15,000, with the growth driven single-handedly by an increase in the workforce of the European Investment Bank (EIB).

There are currently 14,932 EU staff working in Luxembourg, up from 14,519 a year ago, despite concerns over the country’s sky-high housing costs and attractiveness compared to Brussels.

The data on staff numbers was provided by the various EU bodies in response to a request from the Luxembourg Times.

It relates to the headcount as of December 2025, except for the European Commission, whose figures date back to October, and the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which did not provide updated numbers and referred back to their last official headcount from 31 December 2024.

EIB: Luxembourg’s largest EU employer

Around one in three EU staff in Luxembourg are employed by the EIB, which has overtaken the European Commission, European Parliament and ECJ in recent years to comfortably establish itself as the country’s largest EU employer by some distance, employing just over 5,100 people.

The European Commission, with 3,636 staff – down from 3,659 the previous year – is the second-largest EU employer, followed by the European Parliament, which increased its headcount from 2,362 in 2024 to 2,400 this year in Luxembourg, the home of its secretariat headquarters.

In a deal agreed in 2015 between then Commission Vice-President Kristalina Georgieva and Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, the EU’s executive arm pledged to keep at least 12.48% of its total employees based in Luxembourg.

However, according to annual HR figures since 2016, it appears that the commission has consistently failed to meet that threshold, with the share of Luxembourg-based staff remaining between 11-12% each year. The commission employed 33,050 staff across all locations in October this year, according to its latest figures.

In the European Parliament, there are 4,550 staff working in Brussels, the seat of the majority of the legislature’s business and plenary sessions, and a further 350 in Strasbourg, which hosts sessions for one week each month.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) said that updated staff numbers for 2025 were not yet available, and referred back to the latest official figures from the end of 2024, when it had 2,267 staff.

Minimal change at other bodies

There were minimal fluctuations in staff numbers at other EU institutions and bodies in the Grand Duchy over the past year.

The EU’s budget watchdog, the European Court of Auditors (ECA), currently employs 984 staff at its Luxembourg headquarters, down from 989 a year ago.

Luxembourg is also home to two of the bloc’s youngest bodies, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which launched in 2012, and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) which opened in 2021.

The ESM currently employs 227 staff, down from 240 a year ago, while EPPO’s headcount has risen from 275 to 300 in the last 12 months.

Decade of growth

The overall number of staff employed by the various EU institutions and agencies in the Grand Duchy has risen consistently over the past decade, and now stands at just under 15,000, compared to 11,700 back in 2013.

The European Commission’s new headquarters in Luxembourg, to house most of the EU executive arm’s staff and services in the country, has been in the pipeline for two decades and its scheduled completion has been postponed several times.

Luxembourg’s State Council, the country’s de facto upper chamber, approved a further €351 million spending increase for the Jean Monnet 2 building last year. The cost of the site has ballooned to almost €1 billion, nearly twice the original amount agreed for the project close to a decade ago.

Several other EU bodies, including the EIB and ESM, are also due to cement their presence in the country further during this decade with planned expansions of their sites or new headquarters in the Kirchberg district.

The scheduled opening of the EU bank’s expanded headquarters in Luxembourg is expected to face a further delay of several months, the Luxembourg Times revealed last month, with the initial joint venture partnership between two companies appointed to oversee the project amended amid financial difficulties at one of the firms.

Plans for the European Investment Bank’s (EIB) new premises in Kirchberg were first unveiled in 2018, and the site was originally scheduled to open in 2023.

The introduction of a monthly housing allowance payment of up to €500 for the lowest-paid staff at five EU bodies in Luxembourg, which was introduced this year and has been extended into next year, aims to boost the country’s attractiveness for staff compared to Brussels, where salaries are the same but the cost of living, especially accommodation, is much lower.