France–Luxembourg border

Schengen

On 14 June 1985 Belgium, France, West Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands signed an agreement to phase out checks at their shared borders, aboard the MS Princesse Marie-Astrid moored on the Moselle at the Luxembourg village of Schengen. A convention in 1990 set out how it would work, it came into force in 1995, and in 1999 the Schengen rules became part of EU law.^[1][2]

The ship was sold to Germany in 1992 and sailed the Danube for nearly three decades. Schengen bought it back in 2021, and in June 2025, for the 40th anniversary, it returned as part of a renovated Schengen Museum.^[1]

“…the place where the free movement of people and the gradual removal of internal borders in Europe took shape.”^[1]

Iron and commuters

Luxembourg’s former iron mines lie in its far south-west, along the border with France. In the east, the Moselle leaves France and forms the border between Luxembourg and Germany for a short way; since 1964 a canal from Metz to Koblenz, run by France, Germany and Luxembourg together, has carried large barges along it.^[4][5]

Today the border is crossed daily by workers. In 2024 nearly half of Luxembourg’s 489,000 employees were cross-border workers, and about 126,000 of them lived in France.^[3]