Fill 'er up
June 25, 2011
Wasserbillig - literally "cheap water" - is a picturesque village in rural Luxembourg, right on the border with Germany. Despite its name, it's cheap gas, not water, that the village is known for. Most of the cars driving through here are heading to one of the 11 gas stations on the main street, and almost all the cars have German license plates.
"We've got a lot of traffic and it's often not very pleasant," Mayor of Wasserbillig Gust Stefanetti told Deutsche Welle. "There's constant noise from morning to evening and of course the residents aren't very happy about it."
But Germans from the region have been flocking to the country for years to fill up their cars, and many local companies thrive off the influx of people. Peter Schlüschen is a German businessman, who owns one of the gas stations in Wasserbillig. His company is based in the German town of Trier, but he opened the Luxembourg branch in the face of an economic downturn ten years ago.
"We were forced to open a gas station in Luxembourg to save our company," Schlüschen told Deutsche Welle. "Otherwise we would have gone bankrupt."
Schlüschen added that Luxembourg, too, relies on the flow of people into the country, and the money they bring with them.
"Luxembourg lives off this income, because so many people fill up there," Schüschen said. "If that were taken away, the country would have to be subsidized in some way by Europe."
Tax rises on the way
The European Union is putting pressure on Luxembourg to increase taxes on so-called "dirty" fuels like diesel because of their detrimental impact on the environment. The European Commission is proposing to raise the minimum tax on diesel from the current 330 euros ($476) per 1,000 liters to 412 euros per 1,000 liters in 2018. This would have little effect on most European countries like Germany, which already tax above the minimum. But Luxembourg could be among those hardest hit by the changes.
Amelie Fey said she is hoping there won't be any drastic tax hikes. She always fills up her car on the Luxembourg side of the border. She lives in the German town of Trier and commutes to Luxembourg every day, where she works for a website serving the large border community. Fey admits it's not the greenest lifestyle, but she says there's no alternative.
"It's not as easy as just to say 'ok, we'll make prices higher' because there are a lot of commuters who have to come to work by car, because they need to be flexible, they need to use their car," Fey explained.
"It would be definitely less attractive for commuters to go across the border to Luxembourg to work if the gas prices were the same as in Germany, because they spend a lot of time, and also a lot of money, commuting," she added.
Luxembourg relies on border commuters like Fey, because the country doesn't have a big enough population to fill all the country's jobs. Every day, around 135,000 people commute into the country from France, Belgium and Germany. That's about 43 percent of the total workforce.
Author: Joanna Impey, Luxembourg
Editor: Sean Sinico