72 - SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT Companies in Luxembourg

Analysis

What this data actually tells you

Professional, scientific, and technical activities in Luxembourg run through several distinct, well-defined professional registers rather than a single unified licensing body. Lawyers must be members of one of the country’s two bar associations, the Barreau de Luxembourg or the smaller Barreau de Diekirch, under the amended law of 1991, with a December 2024 reform by the profession’s AML/CFT Committee tightening anti-money-laundering compliance obligations specifically for legal practitioners handling client transactions. Statutory auditors sit on a genuinely unique register: unlike most professions, the CSSF (Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier) — ordinarily thought of as the financial-sector regulator — is also the body that maintains the unique register of approved statutory auditors (réviseurs d’entreprises agréés), reflecting how tightly Luxembourg’s audit profession is tied to its fund and financial-services economy.

Chartered accountants register separately with the OEC (Ordre des Experts-Comptables) under the profession-specific law of 1999, while architects and consulting engineers register with the OAI (Ordre des Architectes et des Ingénieurs-Conseils), both bodies that public tenders and private clients check before contracting for accounting or design work. A recurring pattern worth noting when researching this sector in Luxembourg is that many “professional services” firms appearing in the RCS under this NACE section are simultaneously cross-listed on CSSF’s specialised-PFS or domiciliation-agent registers because of the country’s dense fund-administration ecosystem, so a complete diligence check on a Luxembourg professional-services counterparty typically means checking the relevant professional order (Barreau, OEC, OAI, or CSSF’s auditor register) in addition to, not instead of, ordinary RCS registration.