town, Meurthe-et-Moselle département, Lorraine région, northeastern France, on the Chiers River, near the borders of Belgium and Luxembourg. A part of the former Duchy of Bar, Longwy was annexed by France in 1678. Its 17th-century fortifications in the old quarter (Longwy-Haut) were designed by the military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban. The town was successfully assaulted by the Prussians in 1792 and 1815 and by the Germans in 1870 and 1914. Longwy was long dominated by the metallurgical industry, but, with the successive closure of plants in the 1970s and 1980s, the town was forced to restructure its economy and reclaim vast tracts of derelict land. In 1985 an ambitious transfrontier development program, funded by the European Union (EU), was launched to generate new employment in Longwy and in the adjacent regions of Belgium and Luxembourg. New light industries, services, and educational facilities moved to the area, but this has not stopped the decline of the town's population. Pop. (1999) 14,521; (2005 est.) 14,300.