Luxembourg’s finance minister Pierre Gramegna said on 18 May that informal meetings with British ministers are common practice.Pictured: Pierre Gramegna during the Creative Young Entrepreneur Luxembourg awards ceremony in June 2011. (Luc Deflorenne/Archives)

Luxembourg’s finance minister Pierre Gramegna said on 18 May that informal meetings with British ministers are common practice.Pictured: Pierre Gramegna during the Creative Young Entrepreneur Luxembourg awards ceremony in June 2011. (Luc Deflorenne/Archives)

On Thursday 18 May, Gramegna argued that such informal meetings were common practice and that his government was not going against the principle that unity should prevail amongst EU member states and individual negotiations with the UK should be avoided.

Background

On 25 April, Delano has first reported that Jones was in Luxembourg, officially for a European general affairs council, but that he had also attended the prime minister’s annual state of the nation speech in parliament.

Official sources from the British embassy told Delano on 27 April that he was scheduled to meet several MPs, but due to Purdah regulations (setting out the limits of a caretaker government during the election period), the minister was there in his function as MP.

The Luxemburger Wort reported on 15 May that Jones had, in fact, also met the Luxembourg DP finance minister the previous day, 24 May. The article stated that the meeting with Gramegna was not noted down in the official government diary and not known to political insiders, and speculated that it was kept secret for a reason.

The Wort also found that the initiative for this meeting came from the British ambassador, and that the discussions touched on the situation after the Brexit and the upcoming negotiations.

While the meeting was not against the rules, many have wondered why the meeting was kept secret.

Gramegna: only an exchange of views

Gramegna played down the significance of the meeting during the RTL interview:

“This was very clearly an exchange of views with the vice Brexit minister. There was no attempt at secrecy--many people have seen him. I think it’s normal for a finance minister, who is responsible for the future and the diversification of our financial centre, to meet with such a minister. I want to underline that David Jones requested meetings with ministers of the other 26 member states as well, and to my knowledge he has been received everywhere.”

Arguing that these sorts of meetings were common practice, Gramegna said that he didn’t understand the criticisms. He reiterated that the European Commission was in charge of negotiating with the UK, but also that: “it is normal that the UK wants to find out the position of Luxembourg. We talked a lot about the financial centre.”

Gramegna told RTL that the government’s negotiation strategy for any future EU-UK relations was cooperation rather than confrontation:

“I and my government believe we should aim for cooperation, which has made us strong. We have a nice division of labour with London. In the funds industry, the manager is in London, while we in Luxembourg do the administration. After Brexit, the winner will be the one who offers solutions--and that is what we do. There will still need to be bridges between London’s and Luxembourg’s financial centres. London appreciates a lot our position. During my recent trip to Norway and Sweden, I noticed that our constructive approach is appreciated by actors, bankers and financiers.”

He continued by saying that:

“For these negotiations, we need calm and serenity to get an agreement with the UK in time. No agreement will result in a hole and that is a bad thing in business.”

This contradicts several statements by prime minister Xavier Bettel (DP) and foreign affairs minister Jean Asselborn (LSAP), who have both insisted that there could be no “cherry picking” and that “no Brexit deal is better than a bad deal”.