What actually counts as a qualification for the Luxembourg business permit

The qualification test for the business permit (autorisation d'établissement) turns on which list your declared activity sits on. For ordinary commerce the requirement is none — no professional qualification is required for commercial activities that are not otherwise regulated.

A main craft trade on list A needs a master craftsman's certificate (brevet de maîtrise) covering the craft activity in question or its essential parts, or one of the diploma-and-experience routes below, starting with a vocational diploma (DAP) plus 6 years of practice.

A list B craft accepts 3 years of professional experience in place of the DAP. For list C, none — carrying on a list C craft activity requires no professional qualification. The chancellery duty is €50, and the ministry has 3 months to answer.

Verified in August 2026 against guichet.lu and the consolidated loi du 2 septembre 2011.

Qualification is one of five conditions

Qualification is one item on a list, and the conditions are professional integrity, professional qualification in line with the planned activity, establishment in Luxembourg, effective and permanent management of the business by the permit holder, and compliance with tax and business obligations.

Two of the others sink files first: establishment asks for an appropriate physical installation, adapted to the nature and the scale of the activities carried on, so an address alone does not qualify, and the tax condition is personal — the manager must not have evaded business and tax obligations, including withholding tax, in previous or current business activities.

The bar itself then changes completely with the category of activity.

Commercial activities: a zero bar with named exceptions

A zero bar is the rule for ordinary commerce — trading, e-commerce, most services — and where an exception exists it is named rather than left to judgement. Hospitality is the clear one: the manager must hold a business permit in order to operate a drinking and catering establishment.

Advisory work is a different kind of case, and easily misread: business permits are no longer issued for economic advice and advisory activities; the persons concerned must instead apply for a permit for commercial activities and services.

That changes which permit an adviser applies for, not the qualification bar, which stays at the commercial level. The qualification behind that permit runs through the HoReCa access course, and there is one route around it: one year of professional experience, evidenced by a Centre commun de la sécurité sociale affiliation certificate or an EC certificate from the country of origin, may exempt the applicant from the HoReCa access course.

So the activity wording on the application decides the regime. A file describing regulated work in unregulated language is not a fast file; it is a file that comes back.

Craft trades: lists A, B and C

Craft is where the pillar has teeth. Each trade is named on one of three lists, and the list decides the bar — not the size of the business. For list A the baseline is a master craftsman's certificate (brevet de maîtrise) covering the craft activity in question or its essential parts. Where that certificate is missing, guichet publishes the alternative routes, each pairing a qualification with a defined number of years:

List B is lighter: the vocational diploma is the reference qualification and 3 years of professional experience can stand in its place.

One overlap rule is worth knowing before anyone splits a business in two to fit its qualifications: a craftsman already authorised for a list A activity may also carry out a list B activity belonging to the same technical group. And for list C, none — carrying on a list C craft activity requires no professional qualification.

The pattern in rejections is nearly always the same — real experience, no paper. Time worked without a single employer attestation is time the ministry cannot see, and it does not become visible because you describe it well.

The evidence file on the DAP route

On the diploma-plus-experience route, the file has to make 6 years legible on paper:

1. The DAP itself, in the trade being declared — not an adjacent one.
2. An attestation for every period claimed, naming role, employer and exact dates, so the years add up without gaps.
3. Payroll or social-security records covering the same periods, because two independent documents end the discussion.
4. The integrity documents for the person who will hold the permit.
5. Proof of the €50 chancellery duty.

Each item must exist as a document before the file goes in, and former employers get harder to reach every year.

Liberal professions: the diploma is only half of it

Some liberal professions run through the business permit; others sit outside it entirely. Inside the permit system sit these professions: architect, interior architect, landscape architect or landscape engineer, construction engineer, independent engineer in a discipline other than construction, surveyor, town and country planner, chartered accountant, accountant and patent attorney.

For those, guichet publishes an exact ladder. An accountant (comptable) needs a technical secondary school graduation diploma (diplôme de fin d'études secondaires techniques ou de technicien) in the administrative and commercial division or equivalent, together with 3 years of professional practice. A chartered accountant (expert-comptable) needs a bachelor's degree in economics, finance, management, business law or equivalent, again with 3 years.

Others are governed elsewhere, and no business permit substitutes: the profession of auditor, supervised by the CSSF and controlled by the Institut des réviseurs d'entreprises; other financial-sector professions, which require an authorisation or accreditation from either the Minister of Justice or the CSSF; the profession of lawyer, which requires an authorisation from the Ministry of Justice; and medical professions (physician, dentist, veterinary surgeon, pharmacist) and health professions (nurse, midwife, physiotherapist and others), which require a permit from the Ministry of Health and Social Security.

Who has to hold the qualification

The qualification attaches to the person named as manager, and the law defines that role tightly: the manager must ensure day-to-day management of the business effectively and permanently, through a physical presence at the establishment. The link to the business is defined too: the manager is owner of the business where the activity is carried on in a personal name, or entered in the Trade and Companies Register as the company's mandataire where it is a company.

Integrity is checked on a wider circle than founders expect: it must be proved by the manager of the business in whose name the permit will be issued; and, where the business is operated as a company, also the person holding the majority of the shares and anyone who can exert a significant influence on the management or administration of the business.

The disqualifying acts are concrete, and several are about paperwork rather than crime: leaving tax returns unfiled for 2 financial years, leaving a company unregistered in the Register of Beneficial Owners for 6 months, or making false statements or using forged documents to apply for a business permit. That last one is why dressing up a nominal manager is a poor plan: it aims straight at the pillar examined most closely.

Where the founder lacks the qualification, three mechanics exist: engage a qualified manager who genuinely runs the business, obtain the qualification, or narrow the declared activity to fit the evidence.

Recognition abroad, and the clock

Experience earned in another country counts on the same documentary logic: attestations naming role, employer and period. Diplomas are different, and the law anticipates the delay — where a foreign professional qualification has to be recognised, the ministry's decision window can be extended by 1 month.

That extension is the tell: recognition is a separate procedure with its own queue, so starting it alongside the permit application costs the sequencing. Receipt of the permit file is acknowledged within 15 days, the ministry then has 3 months to decide, and the absence of a ministerial reply before the end of the 3-month period counts as a tacit authorisation.

Two sequencing points matter more. First, the articles of association must be registered with the Trade and Companies Register before the permit is definitively granted, so a new company's permit and its registration interlock rather than queue. Second, the window is a backstop, not a target: every request for a missing certificate costs a letter, a scan and a wait. The full document list sits in our business permit guide.

Common questions

Three questions decide most of the edge cases.

Which activities need no business permit at all?

The exemptions are specific, and include journalistic or book authoring activities that do not involve self-publishing. An educational entrepreneurial school project also stays outside the system while its annual turnover excluding tax remains below €35,000.

I changed careers — does my old experience still count?

Experience proves the trade it was earned in. Years spent in a trade you no longer intend to exercise support a permit for that trade, not the new one: declared activity and evidence have to point at the same thing.

What happens if the file is refused?

A refusal is an administrative decision against which the usual means of appeal can be used, provided the legal deadlines are complied with. The more useful reading is diagnostic: it names the pillar that failed, so the fix is either a document, a different declared activity, or a different person holding the permit.

The ministry assesses documents, not biographies. The qualification you can prove on paper on the day you file is the only qualification the file contains.