GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Italy was dealt a blow Thursday by the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled against it in a case known as Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy that date back to 2009. “Italy violated the European Convention of Human Rights by intercepting and returning to Libya in 2009 a group of Somalis and Eritreans without examining whether this would constitute a real risk to their lives,” according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR),which intervened in the court case.
The Geneva-based organization is calling on countries to provide better access to humanitarian assistance for people picked up at sea, who are often more vulnerable than other asylum-seekers, both physically and psychologically, it says. The decision 23 February “provides important guidance to European states in their border control and interception practices, representing a turning point regarding state responsibilities and the management of mixed migration flows”, the UNHCR believes.
“As an intervener in the case, the UNHCR highlighted the obligation of states not to forcibly return people to countries where they face persecution or serious harm. This is known as the ‘non-refoulement principle’. In its submission to the Court, UNHCR underlined that, given the situation prevailing in Libya at that time, push-back policies undermined access to protection and the principle of non-refoulement, which also applies on the high seas. The UNHCR appreciates the challenges that irregular migration poses to Italy and other EU countries and acknowledges the significant efforts made by Italy and other states to save lives in their search and rescue operations.”
Unemployment hits foreigners harder than Swiss
Streets of Zurich: 22.2% of residents in Switzerland are foreigners
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The rate of growth of resident foreigners as part of the Swiss population is picking up, with a 2.2 percent increase in 2009, new federal statistics show. Germany and Italy lead with the way, with European Union citizens accounting for two-thirds of the increase. Switzerland at 31 Dcember 2009 had 1,802,300 resident foreigners, not including diplomatic and international organization employees.
Switzerland has the highest percentage of foreigners in Europe, after tiny Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, 22.9 percent of the population and one in four workers.
Long-term residents
Nearly 21 percent of resident foreigners were born in Switzerland and nearly 40 percent of those born abroad have lived in the country for at least 15 years and 15 percent have been in Switzerland for at least 30 years.
Asylum-seekers a small percentage
Only 2.2 percent of the resident foreign population, some 40,000 people were in the process of consideration for asylum, with another 1.1 percent having recently demanded asylum.
Higher unemployment, lower wages for foreigners
The definitive figures for 2009, published by the Swiss statistics office Thursday 23 September show several changes in the foreign population, as well as some marked differences between resident foreigners and the Swiss.
Inauguration of Altitude, part of the recent overhaul of restaurants and bars at Geneva Airport
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva Airport is in the black for 2009: the good news about its CHF40 million in profits for last year comes as the airport is getting back to work after a six-day closure due to volcanic ash from Iceland.
Geneva International Airport had turnover of CHF295 million for 2009, and airport authorities, in announcing the figures Monday, say development plans for the airport can move ahead.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Supermarket cooperative group Migros posted a 20.8 percent increase in profits, CHF846 million, in 2009 despite a 3.1 percent fall in sales, the company announced Tuesday 30 March.
Turnover was CHF24.95 billion, of which retail sales were CHF21.04b.
Inside EPFL's Rolex Learning Center (photo©2010 Peter Brodbeck)
Architects Sejima and Nishizawa (photo 2010, Sanaa)
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The architects who designed the Rolex Learning Center at EPFL in Lausanne will be awarded the Pritzker Prize, widely considered the top prize in architecture, in May at Ellis Island in New York.
The news was announced Monday 29 March by the Hyatt Foundation in Los Angeles, California. The two will be awarded $100,000 in prize money.
Last year’s winner was Peter Zumthor of Switzerland.
Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, partners in the architectural firm, Sanaa, were named by the jury “For architecture that is simultaneously delicate and powerful, precise and fluid, ingenious but not overly or overtly clever; for the creation of buildings that successfully interact with their contexts and the activities they contain, creating a sense of fullness and experiential richness; for a singular architectural language that springs from a collaborative process that is both unique and inspirational; for their notable completed buildings and the promise of new projects together.”
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland has for the first time produced nationwide crime statistics that will in future allow for true comparisons between areas. Top of the list of crimes committed: theft and property damage, which together make up 82 percent of all crimes, with car theft more than one-third of these.
Swiss police registered 675,309 crimes in 2009.
Domestic violence: one-third of violent crimes; foreigners commit one-third of all crimes
Vevey, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Food multinational Nestlé says its profits fell by more than 40 percent in 2009 compared to the previous year largely because of a hefty profit in 2008 from the sale of Alcon eye-care company. Net profit in 2009 was CHF10.4 billion, down from CHF18b in 2008.
Sales slipped from CHF109.9b to CHF107.6b but the company says that new markets, particularly in Africa and Asia, are growing well. CEO Paul Bulcke, Nestlé chief executive struck a positive note: “With organic growth of 4.1 percent achieved in last year’s challenging environment, we were able to grow substantially faster than our industry.”
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss National Bank expects to see a “large profit” of CHF10 billion for 2009, thanks to the rapid rise in the price of gold and currency fluctuations during the year. The valuation of the gold holdings of the central bank rose by CHF7.3 billion during the year, with the price of gold moving between about $800 and $1,200 an ounce (chart).
The bank’s foreign currency positions brought in another CHF2b.
The profits are shared in part with the federal and cantonal governments, some CHF2.5b.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The exceedingly turbulent 2009 is a year many airlines will be happy to forget, with traffic down and finances in dismal shape, but Swiss ended the year with small increases in passenger traffic, and the number of flights also rose slightly.December proved to be a relatively good month, with 6.7 percent more passengers than in December 2008, and seat load factor climbed from 76.3 percent to 81.0 percent.
The airline carried 13.8 million passengers last year, a 2.4 percent increase on
the 13.5 million carried in 2008. Swiss operated 136 536 flights in 2009, an increase of 1.6 percent over the previous year.
2009 Unemployment figures for Switzerland: Seco
Update 17:55 Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Unemployment in Switzerland rose in December to 4.4 percent, up from 4.2 percent the previous month. Neuchatel and Geneva rose to 7.2 percent, the highest rates in the country, while canton Valais had the largest single month increase. 1.1 percent. Vaud’s rate in December was 5.9 percent.
Ed. note: Geneva, reports the Tribune de Geneve, argues that the federal statistics are skewered because they use data from 2000 for the canton’s working population. The canton in fact has an unemployment rate of 6.6 percent, it says.
Foreigners have been reported in the past to be affected more than the Swiss, and 2009 was no exception, with the rate for Swiss workers climbing 1 percent in December compared to 12 months earlier, but 2.5 percent for foreigners. Non-Swiss unemployed workers accounted for 46.4 percent of the total.
For the first time, jobless rates published by Seco are broken down according to nationality, although the figures provided, only in German, are limited to these groups:
Valais grapes nearly ready for harvest, September 2009
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The first analyses of the 2009 Swiss wine vintage, in November, showed them to be very promising, but the federal agriculture department’s end of the year gift to the wine business 31 December was its confirmation that 2009 was not just very good, but excellent: one for the records in terms of both quality and quantity.
The quality of 2009 Swiss wines deemed “excellent”
The growing season came close to perfection for most producers. A long, cold, snowy winter was followed by an April that brought the vines to life quickly. The summer was hot and dry, starting in June, which led to quick flowering in most wine regions. July was humid, followed by a dry spell that allowed the grapes to mature well. And it remained warm and dry throughout the harvest period, to growers’ delight.
Switzerland produces more red than white wine, including some of the world's top Pinot Noirs. Here, one at the Mondial du Pinot Noir competition.
The only problem was a patch of golf-ball size hail that hit some areas in July, notably around Bougy and Aubonne. But Raymond Paccot, one of that area’s top growers, told GenevaLunch today that even for those hit by hail it was an exceptional year. About 50 percent of his grapes in the Bougy-Villars hillside were lost and 20-30 percent around Féchy, but “it didn’t matter in the end because the rest of the season was so good that we were able to make up for it.”
Grape-growing regions harvested 1.1 million hectolitres (1,000 litres, a common unit of wine production measure) of wine grapes, some 35,000 more than in 2008. The growing area remained stable, with 14,841 hectares of vines.
Switzerland’s four largest wine-producing regions in 2009, with over 100,000 hectares of vines:
Canton, growing area in hectares / wine produced (hectolitres)
- Valais, 509,234.38ha / 449,733.54hl
- Vaud, 381,861.48ha / 290,500.91hl
- Geneva, 129,213.00ha / 94,098.53hl
- Ticino, 103,982.90ha / 58,987.09hl
Kloten International Airport, Zurich, Switzerland
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva’s Cointrin International Airport will most likely end 2009 with 2 percent fewer passengers, a figure that is healthier than those most airports will show this year. The figure was provided by Robert Deillon, president of AIG, which manages the airport, in an interview with Swiss wire service ATS. Deillon says that only four months showed drops, while traffic increased by 4 percent each month in October and November, compared to a year earlier.
Zurich’s Kloten airport is expected to show similar figures, says Deillon.
The figures contrast with the bigger industry picture, provided 15 December by Iata (International Air Transport Association) at an annual press conference in Geneva.
Hot weather grape harvest 2009, La Colombe, Fechy
Golf-ball-sized hail 23 July, outside Ikea in Allaman, Vaud
Nyon, Switzerland (Geneva, Switzerland) – Swiss wines, vintage 2009, will be among those loved and remembered by consumers, thanks in large part to a warm, sunny and dry August that was enjoyed equally by humans and grapes. The 2009 official wine results are in, from the federal agricultural station Changins, near Nyon, and the news is good. The harvest, which began in September and for the most part ended in mid-October, was “very good”, with “exceptional” ripening conditions in August and early September. The one exception is some areas in canton Vaud’s La Côte region, hit hard by 15 minutes of hail 23 July, which wiped out some vine parcels’ (growing areas) grapes.
Grapes developed fully, with little rot occurring, thanks to dry weather in most parts of Switzerland: an “exemplary” situation where all climactic conditions came together to keep the grapes healthy.
Hilary Mantel’s fictionalized account of the life of Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall, won the 2009 Man Booker prize for fiction, awarded in London 6 October. It has been the bookies’ favourite since a six-book shortlist was announced in July 2009. The book is a saga of the search for power in the court of Henry VIII. Mantel wins £50,000 in prize money plus a likely strong boost in sales. The prize group says that sales for all six short-listed books have been very strong since the longlist was announced earlier in the year, more than double what they were for the same period in 2008.
The shortlisted authors and books are:
- A S Byatt The Children’s Book (Random House, Chatto and Windus)
- J M Coetzee Summertime (Random House, Harvill Secker)
- Adam Foulds The Quickening Maze (Random House, Jonathan Cape)
- Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate)
- Simon Mawer The Glass Room (Little, Brown)
- Sarah Waters The Little Stranger (Little, Brown, Virago).
Taoiseach (head of government) Brian Cowen Saturday 3 October announced the overwhelmingly positive response of Ireland in its referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, with a 67 percent “yes” vote and a voter turnout of 58 percent. The second referendum is a turnabout: 54 percent of voters said no to the treaty in a first referendum in June 2008.
Paleo Music Festival, near Nyon, Switzerland, a sea of music-lovers
Montreux, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Lake Geneva region’s musical summer is well underway, good for music-lovers, a bit less so for drivers. If you’re on the road between Geneva and Lausanne in the coming week, check the news for traffic jams around Nyon. Festival-goers are urged to use public transport, made easy for them: the CFF rail company is putting on extra trains and reducing ticket prices. The last train for Geneva leaves at 03:00 and for Lausanne-Montreux at 03:30. Shuttles and extra trains between the Nyon train station and the festival operate at 10-minute intervals.
The festival sold out, all 200,000 tickets, in two hours when sales opened in April. An additional 1,000 tickets a day go on sale online at the festival site, to discourage black market ticket sales.
GenevaLunch will be covering the festival daily, bringing you news and reviews.
Montreux closes on a happy note, offers listeners online treats
Read more…
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss Finance Department Tuesday 14 July published its annual figures on the financial and insurance industries, awaited with more interest than usual. The most startling numbers for 2008 show the fall in the value of client securities managed: down from CHF5,2325 billion in 2007 to CHF3,847b in 2008. The drop reflects the decline in the stock market, which at the end of 2007 had a value of CHF1,187 billion but by the end of 2008 it stood at CHF774b.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva will host a 2009 edition of the fabled 1001 nights when the Sultanat of Oman comes to town as the guest of honour for the Fêtes de Genève.
The fete, which is Switzerland’s largest tourist attraction, consists of two weeks of partying and music in the streets followed by nine days of fun fair and a giant fireworks show. The pre-fete is 16-29 July, followed by the Fêtes themselves until 9 August.
The giant party is home to 150 food stalls and restaurants, 65 rides and 120 musical offers every evening.
The 2008 Fêtes brought the city thousands of visitors, with Geneva earning an estimated CHF120 million. The fireworks over the lake are widely considered some of the best in Switzerland.
Details: city’s Fêtes de Genève web site, Tribune de Genève article
Luxemburg (GenevaLunch) – Europe-wide growth declined 2.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009, compared with the the last quarter of 2008, Eurostat figures released 15 May show. Eurostat is the European Union’s statistical office. Comparable figures for the United States show a 1.6 percent decline.
Electric bike manufacturers exhibit products, Neuchatel
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland is setting a successful example for its “soft mobility” meeting zones, with more than 500 in cities and towns across the country, according to Matthieu Chenal, spokesperson for SwissEnergie, which is co-hosting with the city of Neuchatel the second National Mobility Fair, 15-16 May. Chenal, in a lengthy interview with Le Temps, talks about objections to and ultimate success of the zones.
The fair brings together experts in the field of environmentally-friendly transport and exhibitors who display a range of eco-mobility products. A highlight will be the Saturday exhibition of low-fuel use vehicles. The fair also brings together companies and communes in an effort to encourage businesses to be involved in finding eco-friendly solutions for the company’s but also its employees’ transport needs.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The sun held out in Geneva long enough for the Geneva Marathon to be run, with 28-year-old Ethiopian Tsige Germa winning the men’s 26-kilometre race in 2:19.49.9 and Reulen Stijntje, 1967, Arzier, Vaud taking first place for the women, in 2:52.47.0. The bigger cloud over the event was the question of whether this would be the last marathon: the organizers have said they are resigning en masse, worn out from trouble finding sponsors as well sa lengthy negotiations with the city over closing streets for the race, according to Le Matin.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – UBS is reporting in a webcast 6 May that its loss for the first quarter of 2009 is CHF2 billion.
Net outflows of new money for its Global Asset Management business have slowed, the bank reports, to CHF7.7 billion.
The loss is attributed mainly to risk business that the bank has left or is in the process of leaving. UBS live webcast, 09:00
Related, Le Temps (Fre)
Geneva, Switzerland (20 Minutes, Fre) – The number of debts sent for collection increased 13 percent in the first three months of 2009 in Geneva, Olivier Chollet of the Geneva Collections Bureau told 20 Minutes. People are under more pressure to keep up with their bills, the newspaper quotes Pierre-François Unger, the canton’s Economy and Health Department minister, as saying.
Indian Wells, California, USA (GenevaLunch) - Rafael Nadal confirmed his position as number one by thrashing Andy Murray 6-1 6-2 in the ATP final at Indian Wells. Nadal mastered the windy conditions much better than the Scot. Details, Independent, UK
The Gartner Institute, which tracks the IT industry, computer sales and makes projections, says that 2009 will be the year when the sale of PCs falls by a record 11.9%, the biggest drop in the history of computers. The second-worst year was in 2001, at the height of the Internet bubble bursting, when sales went down by 3.2%. TSR’s Nouvo (Fre) and the Register, UK
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The World Telecom conference in October will play host to several heads of state as part of its effort to point to the ICT’s (information and communication technology) ability to re-establish confidence in the economy.
Melbourne, Australia (GenevaLunch) - Rafael Nadal justified his number one ranking and ended, at least for a while, Roger Federer’s dream of matching Pete Sampras’s record of 14 Grand Slam victories. Despite his epic five-hour semi-final match two days earlier Nadal ended looking fresher and fitter than Federer at the end of another five-set thriller.
Romanel-sur-Morges, Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Logitech shares fell 10% Tuesday morning after announcing a nearly 70% slide in profits. Net income is listed as $40.5 million. The 27-year-old Swiss and US company has long been one of the most resilient around, with double-digit increases in profits every quarter for several years.
2009: stormy days for airlines
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Airlines around the world are expected to lose $5 billion in 2008, of which European airlines will lose $1b, a 10-fold drop. Overall, revenues will fall to $501b with losses rather than profits the story in every region except North America, where profits will be less than 1% of revenue.
