Recent opinion polls give the CSV a head start.

The party leader Marc Spautz announced a few major issues ahead of the 14 October parliamentary elections, such as housing, family policies or supporting small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Spautz outlined the general principles on family policy: “We must give families a choice. The coalition has only worked on one option, that of both parents working. We prefer giving families the choice of what works best for them. As for family benefits, we think that the arrival of a third child changes a family and it is normal that benefits are adapted.”

Claude Wiseler, the lead candidate for the October elections, said that growth was not everything: “The coalition programme is based on growth at any price. It will not be manageable to base our economy on attracting more and more people. We must be able to catch up in terms of a coherent infrastructure.”

Spautz meanwhile said that the CSV would put more accent on encouraging and supporting SMEs, rather than chasing after big multinationals, a dig at Schneider’s attempts to attract a Google data centre.

Viviane Reding

Paperjam reports that, while the nominations for the candidate lists in the Centre and East had already been published on RTL on Thursday 4 January, no one at the event wanted to confirm or deny the reports, but Zeimet said that RTL was “well informed”.

The former EU commissioner and current MEP Viviane Reding is set to figure on a candidate list, but was not yet included on those released yesterday. She said: “I will stand for election, but I don’t yet know where. The party will decide that.”