Luxembourg’s Ministry of Justice has announced the launch of a reform campaign targeting the national business register — Luxembourg Business Registers (LBR). The initiative will, in particular, involve changes in approaches to working with companies. This was reported by RTL Today.
How the work of the Luxembourg Trade Register has evolved recently
The founders of Luxembourg Business Registers include the State, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Chamber of Skilled Trades and Crafts. LBR manages the country’s key national registers: the Trade and Companies Register (RCS), the Register of Beneficial Owners (RBE), the Electronic Compendium of Companies and Associations (RESA), and the Insolvency Register (REGINSOL).
At the beginning of 2025 the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg carried out a reform of company register regulation and beneficial ownership oversight.
The legal framework was amended by a law adopted on 23 January 2025. It clarified certain procedures and aligned Luxembourg’s regulatory system with the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 22 November 2022, which protects the privacy rights of company owners.
The provisions of the new law introduced cross-checking of data contained in the company and beneficial ownership registers against other national databases. One example of such control is the automatic alignment of company addresses with the data from the national register of localities.
Additional data standardization parameters were introduced for the company register with regard to both natural and legal persons indicated at the time of registration. To a large extent, this formalized practices that had already been established under other regulatory acts.
The law also established an enhanced monitoring regime for the data contained in the registers. Competent authorities are now able to conduct ongoing supervision by verifying the accuracy of information, sending requests, reminding company officers of their obligations, and applying administrative measures where necessary. Failure to comply with such requirements may result in an official warning, the imposition of sanctions, or referral of materials to the public prosecutor’s office.
Legal owners listed in the company register are automatically proposed for inclusion in the register of beneficial owners, unless there is evidence to the contrary. This simplifies compliance obligations for company management and helps save time.
The new law also introduced a requirement to enter data on registered alternative investment funds into the company register and standardized the information to be provided about their managers.
Luxembourg has effectively incorporated into national legislation the principles set out in the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the protection of company owners’ privacy. The Grand Duchy acknowledged that unrestricted public access to beneficial ownership data constitutes a serious interference with fundamental human rights.
Accordingly, access must be granted only to the extent necessary for combating financial crime. Under the new law, such access will be provided to competent national authorities, anti-money laundering professionals, self-regulatory bodies performing AML functions, persons able to demonstrate a legitimate interest, and public institutions entitled to obtain such information under other laws. Persons with a legitimate interest include, in particular, professional journalists.
How Luxembourg is reforming the Trade Register in 2026
On 28 January 2026, Luxembourg’s Minister of Justice, Elisabeth Margue, held a press conference outlining the state of the country’s corporate sector and presenting a new reform of the national business register.
According to the Ministry of Justice, as of 31 December 2025, 168,000 legal entities were listed in the national trade register — 13,000 more than a year earlier. However, despite this positive quantitative growth, the corporate sector faces a serious issue: a significant number of registered companies fail to comply with their legal obligations. This situation prompted the Luxembourg authorities to launch a new phase of reform of the Luxembourg Business Registers (LBR).
Elisabeth Margue presented the reform plan during the press conference. It forms part of a broader strategy aimed at improving the “quality, reliability and efficiency” of public policy in the field of business information.
Margue emphasized that following the administrative changes introduced in 2025, the national business register had already legally transitioned from a purely data-collection function to active monitoring of the corporate environment. The current reform phase is intended to translate these principles into practical implementation. LBR will receive new tools to ensure compliance with corporate regulations.
The application of measures to the business community will be phased. At the initial stage, efforts will focus on prevention, including information campaigns aimed at encouraging voluntary compliance. After this period, the authorities will assess the results. At a subsequent stage, official sanctions may be imposed on organizations that continue to violate the law. Potential sanctions include increased administrative fees, removal from the register, or referral of materials to the public prosecutor’s office for legal action.
Companies registered in the Trade and Companies Register as well as in the Register of Beneficial Owners are subject to a “manual” verification of data accuracy by LBR staff.
Following the initial review, company information “is subject to automated and regular monitoring throughout its entire life cycle to detect missing, outdated or questionable information.”
According to the Ministry of Justice, the Luxembourg Business Registers “will conduct targeted outreach to companies and associations to ensure that their data remains up to date.”
Strengthening compliance with legal requirements contributes to combating economic crime and enhances trust in the registers as official reference sources for public authorities and economic actors.
— the official statement of Luxembourg’s Ministry of Justice reads.
Elisabeth Margue elaborated on this point at the press conference, emphasizing that the current reforms pursue a “dual” objective: “to ensure reliable, accurate and fair registers so that information is constantly up to date and can be used with maximum efficiency,” and “to combat economic crime.”
In effect, the Luxembourg authorities have signaled to the business community that the upcoming information and preventive campaign represents a final opportunity for non-compliant entities to bring their data into order — otherwise they may face stringent legal sanctions.
The Trade and Companies Register of Luxembourg in its current form has existed since 2003. In turn, the Register of Beneficial Owners, which lists the ultimate beneficial owners of these entities, was established in 2019 in line with anti–money laundering initiatives.
It was created following a series of journalistic investigations that cast Luxembourg as a jurisdiction characterized by opaque business practices. In particular, this refers to the LuxLeaks scandal of 2014, which revealed how major multinational corporations made use of Luxembourg’s fiscal preferences to reduce their tax liabilities in the countries where they actually operated. In 2021, journalists further reported that representatives of international organized crime might be concealing funds in Luxembourg.
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