Hands Off
For RTL's summer interview, The Left's co-spokesperson Carole Thoma chose a spot to which she has strong ties: d'Haard forest in Dudelange. As a Dudelange local, it was quickly clear the conversation should take place in her hometown. In the current heat, the forest was one of the more pleasant options, all the more since there is little shade to be found in the centre of Dudelange itself.
Thoma sees rising social inequality as a growing problem. The social democratic parties in Europe, which have had the chance to change things over the past 10 or 15 years, must also shoulder some of the blame. Even if the trajectory in Luxembourg is not solely the Luxembourg Socialist Worker's Party's doing, poverty has risen and the social gap has continued to widen. Social democratic parties, in her view, have accepted too many compromises in the past.
Compromises on the index, however, are out of the question. There is regular talk of capping the index, on the grounds that people with a bigger salary benefit more from it than those close to the minimum wage. According to Thoma, a cap would above all benefit large companies, which would have to pay out less in salaries. On top of that, the automaticity of the system itself would then be called into question. Her position is clear: "Hands off the index."
On housing, the engineer has a very specific demand. If she could push through a single measure tomorrow, it would be a rent cap.
Thoma does not categorically rule out cooperation with a conservative party such as the CSV in a similarly extreme situation. She hopes Luxembourg would never end up in a position in which a far-right party was polling around 40%. Should the country nevertheless find itself in such a scenario, everyone would have to take their share of responsibility.
As for her own political future, under The Left's rotation principle, she could return to the Chamber one day. She had not gone into politics with the specific aim of holding a mandate. As an employee, she also sees a structural problem: with only 20 hours of political leave, it would be difficult to combine a Chamber mandate with a regular job, and parliament would end up not being sufficiently representative of society.
Even though politics takes up a great deal of space, another ambition still lingers. Thoma has wanted to write a book since childhood. Perhaps, she said, that too may come her way someday.