Portability of Student Benefits in the European Union - The Luxembourg System

Since its creation, Luxembourg’s system of financial aid for higher (university) studies has set as its primary objective the increase of the proportion of its resident population holding a higher education degree. However, the fact that Luxembourg did not have its own university system until 2003 made this country even more dependent on other European countries to fulfil this policy objective. This explains why the portability of national financial assistance for higher education was crucial to achieve it. In the European Union (EU) context, the portability – or exportability – of student grants or loans may be defined as the faculty for students to ‘export’ such benefits to a Member State that is different from the one which allocates them. Portability is also the reason why the Luxembourg system falls into the scope of EU law, since it may interfere with equal treatment between workers all the more so, as frontier workers account for more than 45% of the country’s labour force. These peculiarities provide the background for the three decisions of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) on the portability of financial aid for higher studies for children of frontier workers that lie at the heart of this paper. It will start by briefly highlighting the evolution of Luxembourg’s system of financial aid for higher education and present its main features. Then, it will show that despite the recent clarifications given by the CJEU in the last two cases of 2016, several issues remain unanswered, both from an EU and national law perspective.