Luxembourg grand duke in danger of losing prerogatives
Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg is the last grand duke anywhere in the world. Yet he insists he is not an endangered species, and to a great extent he helped stir up the furor that threatens to curtail his ducal powers.
“The title is historic,” he said, receiving a visitor in the castle of Berg, a faux Gothic residence that his great-grandfather built of reinforced concrete before World War I. “But of course we are now a constitutional monarchy.”
Henri’s role here has lately become a matter of debate among the 486,000 citizens of this prosperous sliver of a country. “A large part of the population has an attitude you’d call, in religion, agnostic,” said Frank Engel, 33, secretary general of the Christian Social People’s Party, the largest bloc in Parliament.
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“The title is historic,” he said, receiving a visitor in the castle of Berg, a faux Gothic residence that his great-grandfather built of reinforced concrete before World War I. “But of course we are now a constitutional monarchy.”
Henri’s role here has lately become a matter of debate among the 486,000 citizens of this prosperous sliver of a country. “A large part of the population has an attitude you’d call, in religion, agnostic,” said Frank Engel, 33, secretary general of the Christian Social People’s Party, the largest bloc in Parliament.