In Libramont-Chevigny, at the New Year address of the Mouvement Réformateur in the province of Luxembourg, provincial federation president Benoît Piedboeuf opened the evening by paying tribute to "grassroots fighters", activists, elected representatives and supporters who turned out despite the weather storm and the political one.
In a speech that was both unifying and combative, he paid tribute to the collective work carried out by Walloon and Luxembourg liberals, highlighting "the cohesion, solidarity and creativity" of his teams across municipalities, inter-municipal bodies and the province. He called for "continuing to promote the value of work, freedom, quality education and security", while warning against the risk of discouragement in the face of attacks and political storms: "People vote for men and women, not for abstractions or opinion polls."
The federal MP also praised the leadership of Georges-Louis Bouchez, crediting him with "a driving role in the fundamental structural reforms" carried out in recent months, and emphasised their historic scope: promoting the value of work, reforming solidarity, and budgetary responsibility. He argued that these transformations should continue to rely on dialogue, collective intelligence and "the spirit of common sense that characterises liberal Luxembourg".
Paying tribute to the MR's local achievements (20 mayors, 30 municipal majorities, 12 provincial councillors and a network of committed elected representatives across the territory), he expressed the hope that the reformist family would "remain united, collective and attentive", in the face of fake news and polarisation.
"Even if you are not the sun, that is no reason to be a cloud", he concluded, wishing everyone "a fine year of confidence, calm and action".
Between political realism and mobilising optimism, Benoît Piedboeuf recalled that the MR's strength, in Luxembourg as elsewhere, rests on closeness to citizens, active solidarity and consistent values.
Read the full speech by Benoît Piedboeuf as President of the MR Federation of Luxembourg
Good evening to everyone, good evening to all our supporters, good evening to the farmers we have met and who are here with us tonight.
Good evening also to Minister Valérie Glatigny, to the Minister-President who has joined us, and to my friend and fellow campaigner Bernard Quintin, Minister for Security. Two months ago, when he walked into Parliament with his smile, I told him: "Listen, when I see you arriving, I'm really glad." I feel like everything is going well.
I also greet Willy, the group leader at the province, all our friends who are elected representatives, provincial councillors, mayors. And all of you who are here every year to help us, encourage us, keep us going. And I forgot the MPs, I always forget them, my dear Anne and Yves, our MPs, and also our MP who is Speaker of Parliament, but I'll come back to that later.
Those who live on our planet and are bound to it because it is our home (until artificial intelligence or teleportation through quantum entanglement lets us leave it) will have noticed that today, on our New Year's gathering of all days, a storm warning was announced, and it unfolded, as you saw, all day long. It's actually a wink from nature illustrating the year that has just ended, and partly setting the tone for the next one. Because atmospheric storms are generally born from a conflict between a low-pressure zone and a high-pressure zone. Isn't that right, Denis? The same is true in politics.
And we see that the high pressure… which we embodied with our azure majority in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and the Arizona coalition at federal level, that our high pressure collided with a historic low pressure and a dangerous inertia. This created storms and various movements. Most recently in Liège. The confrontation was at times violent, going beyond the symbolic boundaries of Liège. The day before yesterday, an effigy was seen being burned. We can only regret this today, when we hear that a good many of our opponents would not reverse our reforms if they returned to power in a better political climate. In short, the year was turbulent because, at the instigation of our President (and I stress his driving role, having seen him work day after day), at the instigation of our President, we collectively carried out fundamental structural reforms in just a few months: a true societal transition, a paradigm shift, and the establishment of a new momentum, reinforcing our principles of valuing work, freedom, quality education, my dear Valérie, security, solidarity, economic development and state neutrality.
There remains an enormous savings effort to be made in our public spending in order to give opportunities to future generations. Georges-Louis will elaborate on these topics shortly. All these courageous reforms have only been possible (and will only be achievable) with your support, with our cohesion, and by integrating into our daily actions the principles underpinning this new model of society and properly understood solidarity. From the municipal level through the provincial level (and I give a big wink to my friends the provincial councillors) through our inter-municipal bodies, we will need to show creativity, inspiration and determination to strengthen our regional and federal actions.
We, the people of Luxembourg, are accustomed to common sense, to good, frugal and balanced management, driven by the general interest. That is why… In the planned reforms, we ask (and this is no subliminal message, Mr President), we ask for consultation, joint reflection and the use of collective intelligence. We are ready for developments that lift us upward, but we are not ready to accept doing worse than we do now. That is true for the municipalities, it is true for the province. We will have the opportunity to debate it.
We liberals have always set the example when it comes to collective organisation, whether in the emergency services zone or the police zone, whether in inter-municipal bodies or in local television which we support, contrary to what is said, whether in developing rural, tourism, European and cross-border projects, or in our capacity to build collective, creative and cooperative governance. We have continually grown in our engagement on the ground, with 20 mayors and 30 majorities out of 43, 7 CPAS chairs, 220 affiliated elected representatives, 12 provincial councillors and one provincial deputy, 3 regional MPs and one federal MP, a Speaker of the Walloon Parliament, a federal group leader (forgive me for saying so myself), two inter-municipal chairs, a chairwoman of the federation of local elected representatives, Anne, a chairman (you heard about him earlier) of the MR's national member consultation body, Simon, and numerous active representations across all social and economic fields.
As elsewhere, our membership has grown, and we intend to consolidate and repeat our results by demonstrating our actions on the ground. People vote for men and women. They do not vote for abstractions, concepts or opinion polls. It is the quality of our work that will keep us at the top of responsibility, not individual comments, not fake news, not verbal or physical violence, not denigration and corrupted social networks. We must remain calm and focused, attentive to our residents, our businesses, all workers, all self-employed people and farmers. We must continue to extend solidarity to those who need it.
We must remain united, collective, work as a team and seek elsewhere the support we deserve. I know we can count on you. You also know you can count on our office, our elected representatives, our youth, you'll hear from the chairwoman of our youth wing shortly, on our staff and on me. And as a proverb reminded me this morning, one I saw on my perpetual calendar (we all have a perpetual calendar on our desk), it's an Arabic proverb: Even if you are not the sun, that is no reason to be a cloud. A wonderful year to all.