A Luxembourg business permit — the autorisation d'établissement, often called a business licence — carries a chancellery duty of €50. The Ministry of the Economy issues an acknowledgement of receipt within 15 days and then has 3 months to decide; silence beyond that window counts as tacit authorisation.
The permit is granted against five conditions: 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.
Conditions and deadlines here are read from the law of 2 September 2011 on the right of establishment in its consolidated version applicable from 1 September 2023, and from the Ministry's permit page on guichet.lu, both checked in August 2026.
The two numbers: cost and decision window
The money is trivial and the clock is not. One window governs the file, and it is short enough that the evidence has to be ready before the application goes in.
| Stage | Timing | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Acknowledgement of receipt | 15 days | the Ministry confirms the file arrived |
| Ministry decision | 3 months | the window in which a reply is owed |
| Where a foreign professional qualification has to be recognised | + 1 month | the window can be extended in that case |
| No reply at all | tacit authorisation | the permit is treated as granted |
Tacit authorisation is a legal position, not a piece of paper. A granted file produces the permit number that the display duty below asks you to print; running out the clock produces no such number, which makes it a fallback rather than a plan.
The five conditions, and what each really asks
Integrity, qualification, establishment, effective and permanent management, and tax compliance. The last is short enough to quote whole — the manager must not have evaded business and tax obligations, including withholding tax, in previous or current business activities — and the three below carry almost all the refusals.
Integrity binds more people than the manager
Honorability does not stop at the person signing the application. It binds 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.
A founder who installs a qualified manager but keeps the majority stake has not moved the integrity question off themselves; they have added a second person to it.
The threshold is any conduct or act contrary to a law, regulation or administrative measure that affects professional integrity so seriously that the person cannot be tolerated in the authorised activity. Guichet.lu lists the acts that reach it:
| Disqualifying act | What triggers it |
|---|---|
| Unfiled tax returns | 2 financial years |
| No registration in the Register of Beneficial Owners | 6 months |
| RCS filing breaches | failing, on at least two occasions during the last three financial years, to meet the filing and publication obligations under the Trade and Companies Register law |
| Bankruptcy debts | accumulating substantial debts to public creditors as a result of bankruptcy or compulsory liquidation |
| Criminal conviction | a final criminal or correctional sentence for an offence related to the activity carried out or to be carried out |
| False documents | making false statements or using forged documents to apply for a business permit |
Which documents prove integrity depends on how long the person has lived in Luxembourg. Someone resident here for more than ten years files a declaration of honour on management positions held in the previous 3 years, plus an extract no. 3 from the Luxembourg criminal record.
Everyone else also needs criminal-record extracts from every State of residence over the preceding 10 years, plus a declaration of non-bankruptcy, recent and unlimited in time and space, made before a notary in Luxembourgish, French, German or English — required of non-residents as well as of anyone resident in Luxembourg for less than 10 years; it must state that the applicant has not been involved in the bankruptcy of a business in their own name or in the bankruptcy of a company.
That pair is the biggest scheduling risk in a cross-border file. Three countries in the past decade means three foreign records on three national timetables, and none of them can be back-dated to cover a gap.
Qualification: the condition that actually varies
For commercial activities the requirement is short: none — no professional qualification is required for commercial activities that are not otherwise regulated. A trading or service company outside a regulated field clears this condition on the activity classification alone.
Craft activities are the opposite. They sit on lists, and the list decides the route:
| Route into a list A craft | Qualification held | Experience on top |
|---|---|---|
| Master craftsman | a master craftsman's certificate (brevet de maîtrise) covering the craft activity in question or its essential parts | — |
| Degree partially covering the essential parts | a bachelor's degree | 1 year |
| Degree not covering the activity | a bachelor's degree | 2 years |
| Vocational diploma | a DAP | 6 years |
| Related trade already authorised | a list A permit | 3 years |
List B has its own experience route in place of a DAP, at 3 years, and one adjacency rule saves a second application: a craftsman already authorised for a list A activity may also carry out a list B activity belonging to the same technical group. List C is the outlier: none — carrying on a list C craft activity requires no professional qualification.
Two classification rules catch service businesses. The liberal professions needing a permit are named individually: 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.
And for advisory work, 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. Which evidence satisfies which route is set out in our guide to business permit qualifications.
Establishment: premises, and a manager who is there
The establishment condition is about infrastructure, not an address. The law asks for an appropriate physical installation, adapted to the nature and the scale of the activities carried on — wording that scales, so a consultancy and a bodyshop are not held to the same fit-out, but neither clears it with a mailbox.
The management condition comes in two parts. First, the manager must ensure day-to-day management of the business effectively and permanently, through a physical presence at the establishment.
Second, that person must hold a real link to the business: 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. An owner abroad who appoints a Luxembourg name to sign the file, with no intention that the person runs anything, fails both halves rather than one.
Why the permit and the RCS filing are prepared together
These two steps are easy to picture as a strict sequence, but the rules point at each other. On the Ministry's side, the articles of association must be registered with the Trade and Companies Register before the permit is definitively granted. On the register's side, an Sàrl-S filing must carry the identity of the partners, their precise private or professional address, the number of shares held by each, and the business permit number.
The two files are therefore built in parallel and land in a set order. Treated as unrelated queues, the two timelines are spent end to end instead of overlapping.
Once granted, the permit carries a publication duty: the 2D barcode assigned to each business permit must appear on letters, emails, websites, quotations, invoices and the shop front of every point of sale, as well as on the signs that must be installed at all construction sites.
What goes wrong
Three failure patterns are structural rather than unlucky.
Evidence that was never collected. Ten years of relevant work counts for nothing without employment certificates, diplomas, apprenticeship records or employer attestations in hand. The experience is real; the file is empty.
The wrong activity category. Luxembourg's classification of commercial, craft and industrial activities is granular, and the category decides which qualification rule applies. Chosen loosely, it converts a no-qualification commercial permit into a list A craft file.
A manager on paper only. Integrity reaches the majority shareholder and anyone with significant influence, and management must be effective, permanent and physically present, so a nominal appointment adds a person to scrutinise instead of removing one.
Common questions
The five below follow directly from the conditions above.
How much does a Luxembourg business permit cost?
€50 in chancellery duty. Translations and any notarial declaration sit outside that and depend on the file.
How long does it take?
Acknowledgement within 15 days, decision within 3 months, extended by 1 month where a foreign professional qualification has to be recognised. If nothing comes back, the absence of a ministerial reply before the end of the 3-month period counts as a tacit authorisation.
Can a non-resident or non-EU founder hold the permit?
Residence is not one of the five conditions, so yes in principle; what changes is the evidence, namely the notarised non-bankruptcy declaration and foreign criminal records described above. A third-country national's residence file then runs in the other direction: where the self-employed activity requires a business permit, the application must include the outline consent from the Ministry of the Economy.
Who does not need a permit?
The exemptions are specific rather than general. Outside the regime are journalistic or book authoring activities that do not involve self-publishing, and an educational entrepreneurial school project below €35,000 of annual turnover excluding tax.
What happens if the permit 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 useful question is which condition failed, because a qualification refusal and an integrity refusal call for different responses.
The document pack
Five items, in the order they should be started rather than the order they are filed:
- Integrity documents matching the applicant's residence history — the declaration of honour and Luxembourg extract no. 3 above ten years' residence, or the notarised non-bankruptcy declaration plus foreign criminal records covering 10 years below it.
- Qualification evidence for the exact activity category: diploma, brevet de maîtrise, DAP or employer attestations covering the year counts above.
- The lease or property deed for premises matching the nature and scale of the activity.
- The articles of association, because definitive grant waits on the RCS registration.
- Payment of the €50 chancellery duty.
Start with item 1. It is the only part of the pack whose timing you do not control.