Veteran Luxembourg PM set for fresh poll victory but loses

Luxembourg's veteran Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker headed for a fresh election win, but after 18 years in office Europe's longest serving leader lost ground, estimates showed.
Juncker's conservative CSV party won 33.4 per cent of the vote in the snap election and 23 seats in the tiny wealthy country's 60-seat parliament, according to estimates by RTL television.
This compared to 38 per cent and 26 seats it won at the last election in 2009.
The centre-right Christian Social People's Party has won every election bar one in Luxembourg since its establishment in 1944.
Just under 240,000 people were called to the ballot box in the European Union's richest state per capita for an election brought forward by seven months after the discovery of misconduct in the secret services.

The prime minister's coalition with the socialist party splintered over misdemeanours by the SREL spy agency, which Juncker oversees.

The 58-year-old premier came under fire for concentrating too much on his role as head of the eurozone finance ministers during the bloc's debt crisis and taking his eye off domestic issues.
His secret service was accused of a series of scandals ranging from illegal phone-tapping to dodgy dealing in luxury cars.
Casting his vote, Juncker said: "I want the CSV to remain the strongest party so that we can govern for the next five years. If this is not the case, I will be an opposition MP."

The estimates showed the socialists losing a little ground at 19.3 per cent (down 2.3 per cent), leaving them neck-to-neck with the opposition Liberals at 19.2 per cent, who made a sharp gain of 4.2 per cent.
But outgoing Finance Minister Luc Frieden said it was "far too early" to say what coalition would lead the country in the coming years.
Though voters deem Juncker competent to continue to steer the state, surveys show a younger generation of politicians increasingly picking up support, notably 40-year-old Liberal Party chief Xavier Bettel.
Also expected to make gains was Greens newcomer Francois Bausch, who for the past three years has run the Luxembourg town hall with Bettel. Estimates showed them losing one of seven seats however.

Bettel and Bausch have made no secret of their hopes of forming a coalition government without Juncker's CSV.