LUXEMBOURG - Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg on Sunday announced he will start transferring powers to his son Guillaume in October, in a surprise move paving the way for the monarch’s abdication. “I would like to inform you that I have decided to appoint Prince Guillaume as Lieutenant-Representative in October,” Henri, 69, said in a national holiday address. “It is with all my love and confidence that I wish him the best of luck.
” Taking over the title marks the beginning of the transfer of the crown to Guillaume, 42, but a full change in the Grand Duchy will likely take several years. “This is the beginning of a next chapter for our monarchy,” Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Luc Frieden told local media. The move came as a shock to the public, but Frieden said it had been mulled behind closed doors for a while.
“We have been talking about it for some time, and I think that on the national holiday it was the right moment, because the Grand Duke is the symbol of our nation,” he said. Henri, a keen sportsman with a fortune estimated at billions of dollars, assumed the crown in 2000 after his father Jean abdicated following a 36-year reign. Luxembourg, a small country of some 660,000 people wedged between Belgium, France and Germany, has a constitutional monarchy with a limited role in government.
Luxembourg’s parliament in 2008 stripped the monarchy of its legislative role after Henri, a Catholic, refused to sign a euthanasia bill into law. Guillaume, whose off.