Pierre Cuny, who has been mayor of Thionville since 2016, chose the Spot, the new 4,400m2 sports complex located behind the theatre, just opposite the Place de la Liberté car park--which is well known to cross-border commuters--as the venue for his back-to-school press conference. The facility is the result of just over three years of work and will be inaugurated next Monday. It is a powerful symbol of the mayor’s determination to make his city a benchmark for sport.

He also took the opportunity to unveil a 50-page brochure summarising the city’s actions over the last ten years. During this period, €170m euros have been invested to make Esch-sur-Alzette’s twin city an attractive place to live, and to give it the means to cope with a growing population. Sixty thousand people will be living here in 20 years’ time, say the mayor’s forecasts. And the number of cross-border commuters going to work in Luxembourg will follow the same upward trend.

“In the border metropolitan cluster, which brings together the eight EPCIs [public inter-municipal cooperation establishment, or établissement public de coopération intercommunale in French], between 50% and 80% of the population work in Luxembourg. In Thionville,  it’s 50%, and in the greater Thionville-Fensch conurbation, it will be around 40,000 people. A third of cross-border commuters come from our region. This gives us a great responsibility. What’s more, Statec forecasts 160,000 cross-border commuters by 2035, and we know full well that half of them will come from our area,” explains the mayor.

This is also one of the reasons behind the creation of the new Thionville-Fensch conurbation (160,000 inhabitants), which will be officially active from 1 January 2025 and brings together the Portes de France-Thionville and Val de Fensch conurbations. “I think it was very important to have a significant weight, and to coexist with Luxembourg,” says Cuny. “There’s no question of having a self-sufficient region, but rather one that looks out over both Luxembourg and Lorraine. That’s always been my aim: to make Thionville an open, European, border city, something that hasn’t really been done until now.”

The challenge of housing and land pressure

But will the area, even if redesigned, be able to accommodate all the cross-border commuters in the future? Yes, but with a few provisos, says the mayor. First, “we have a lot of work to do in terms of land pressure and housing creation.” To this end, a number of major projects are under way, such as the Côte des Roses/Bel-Air “pharaonic worksite,” which will be completed in three years (investment of €120m), and the new districts on the left and right banks of the river.

First, on the left bank. The former industrial wasteland is currently being cleaned up with a view to becoming an eco-district with 1,000 new homes, 25% of which will be social housing. The first permits will be submitted in 2025, with construction due to start in late 2025 or early 2026. On the right bank, the municipal team is aiming to create a ZAC (mixed development zone, or zone d’sménagement concerté) at Couronné. Here, 700 new homes are planned. Also on the right bank, around the train station, 1,000 new homes are expected, as well as 13,400m2 of office space. “The aim is to create a highly European district with a focus on Luxembourg.” On the scale of the conurbation, the mayor also mentions possibilities for the creation of housing, “with 350ha of potential wasteland near Manom-Fensch.”

Avoid becoming a bedroom community

Another condition for coping properly with the border phenomenon is to avoid falling into the trap of becoming a bedroom community. So services need to be developed, and while we’re at it, they need to benefit both residents and cross-border commuters. In this respect, the mayor described  “symbol.” Cuny also mentioned the future silo car park next to the station, which is due to open in the first half of 2025 and is 50% funded by Luxembourg. “It will be named Joseph Bech, one of the builders of Europe, alongside Jean Monnet, Adenauer, de Gasperi and of course Schumann. We want to turn the station area into a European district, looking outwards, and in particular towards Luxembourg,” says the mayor.

But in order to build and offer new services, money remains the sinews of war. So Cuny continues to defend the principle of co-financing. He favours this approach, as opposed to the , and would like to apply it to issues other than transport.

He calls it “sharing the residential economy over the remaining costs” on services such as crèches, for example. “If we didn’t have crèches on our territory, perhaps some parents would simply not go to work in Luxembourg. Or Luxembourg would have to create more crèches. And crèches cost much less to run in France.”

Applying the Luxembourg rate to medical consultations for cross-border commuters

But Cuny goes even further. “In a context of medical desertification, we could imagine that doctors on the French side could apply the Luxembourg rate for cross-border commuters. In France, a consultation costs €26, whereas in Luxembourg it’s €56. When a French doctor charges the French rate for a consultation, he or she saves the CNS €20. So this will also be a major topic of discussion,” warns Cuny, who is an endocrinologist by profession. At the same time, he advocates greater freedom of movement for specialist consultations. “I’m not at all looking to get money back from Luxembourg, but we need balanced development.”

Finally, he believes that better collaboration could be achieved on training. In this area, he advocates a “right to return to training mechanism, which would make it possible to compensate the training body. But this is more complicated to put into practice because we are in Europe, and in Europe there is free movement. I’m in favour of our being an area of engineering, intelligence and industry. But we mustn’t be the butt of the joke. I don’t dispute the fact that trained people go to Luxembourg, but there has to be a return to sender, financially speaking,” he insists.

All these issues should be addressed at the next intergovernmental conference (IGC), due to take place in September or October, but which, according to the mayor, is likely to be postponed in view of the political turmoil in France.

On the political front, the centrist mayor, a member of Édouard Philippe’s Horizons party (Philippe has announced his candidacy for the 2027 presidential election), is still supporting his leader. For his part, he is leaving himself time to consider what comes next, and in particular the 2026 municipal election. “For me, the first thing to think about is my health,” says Cuny. “Today I’m fine, but I’m still giving myself time to think. I’m determined to get going again, but I’ll always be cautious. With the metropolitan agglomeration, we’re going to be entering a much more complicated political dynamic. I don’t think you can leave the boat once you’ve launched it.”

This article was originally published in .