Longer term solutions sought. to absorb immigrants
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss government’s announcement late Wednesday 18 April that it will temporarily cap the number of workers allowed from the European Union-8 States, has prompted several reactions outside the country, which reflect a mix of concerns. But within Switzerland it’s the additional measures to seek longer term solutions to deal with migration that will be debated.
The Federal Council says a quota of 2,000 B residence permits for 12 months will be revived starting 1 May, for workers from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Switzerland had quotas but suspended them 1 May 2011. The government will decide before May 2013 if the quotas will remain in place for the following 12 months.
Agreement with EU allows quotas for transition period that ends in May 2014
By 31 May 2014 the quotas will be lifted permanently, under the terms of the Swiss-EU greement on the free movement of persons (AFM), says Bern, although some EU officials appear to interpret the agreement differently, according to media reports.
The stated rationale for the move is that the safeguard clause in the Agreement on the free movement of persons (AFM) allows Switzerland to unilaterally re-introduce quotas for the EU-8 countries until 2014, “provided that in a given year the number of residence permits and/or short-term residence permits for job seekers from the EU/EFTA States exceeds the average of the previous three years by at least 10 percent.”
The conditions were fulfilled for category B permits, says Bern, from May 2011 through April 2012: the quota could legally be implemented if more than 2,283 B residence permits were issued during that time. More than 6,000 were issued.
The conditions were not, however, met for L permits, and no quota is being implemented there.
B permits are granted, Bern notes, “to persons who possess an employment contract in Switzerland that is valid for more than a year or for an unlimited period, and to individuals who are self-employed. Short residence permits of category L are granted to foreign workers whose employment contract is valid for up to one year.”
EU-8 leaders and some EU politicians unhappy
Bern admits 2008 programme has “not always worked as planned”
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss federal government plans to put more federal money into providing medical and other help for asylum seekers who are being repatriated when their requests are denied and to increase financial incentives that would encourage more to return voluntarily to their home countries, it said Wednesday 18 April. The new system would give those who are returning CHF500 instead of the current CHF200 as an indemnity for the trip. Requests for asylum rose 63 percent in the first quarter of 2012, compared to a year earlier, and Bern wants to speed up the process of sending home those who do not qualify.
The plans to increase and redirect funding involve modifying three ordinances: financing for asylum seekers, for the integration of foreigners, and for repatriation and expulsion of foreigners.
The modifications are open to public consultation until 8 August.
Val d'Anniviers, above St Luc, avalanche that took the life of a 45-year-old Dutch skier 17 April
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 45-year-old Dutch man who lives in The Netherlands died in an avalanche Tuesday 17 April in canton Valais.
He and another person were ski touring in the Val d’Anniviers when they were caught by the avalanche at 12:40. The other skier managed to get free and call for help but the Dutch man was buried under snow and died from his injuries.
The two had left St Luc for the Vijivi Pass. The avalanche was set off as they came back down, at about 2,900 metres.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The European Commission 17 April gave its approval to two tax deals by its states with Switzerland. The German opposition may still be opposed to the tax deal drawn up with its neighbour, but European Commissioner Algirdas Semeta told a group of reporters in Brussels Tuesday that the agreement is legal and can go ahead, and the same holds for an agreement between the UK and Switzerland.
The EU has been cited frequently by the media since last September when the German agreement was signed, for arguing that the agreements were illegal or fly in the face of efforts to encourage EU-wide agreements. Both agreements underwent revisions as a result.
The newly-signed agreement with Austria is still under review by the commissioner’s office.
Geneva's buses and trams
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Fewer people died in train accidents in Switzerland in 2011, compared to 2010, but the number of deaths related to trams and buses rose. The country saw 13 deaths from trains last year, down by 5, most of them due to crossing train tracks and movements by freight trains.
The 18 other accidents, involving buses and trams, were mostly due to crashes by vehicles with other forms of transport, including bicycles and motorcycles, or with pedestrians.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – One person won CHF64.7 million with the Euro-millions Lottery Friday night. The lottery has nine participating countries, including Switzerland. The winner had to have the following numbers: 8, 13, 26, 39, 43 as well as matching two stars. Another 15 ticket holders who had the five numbers and matched one star won CHF171,209.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland and its neighbour Austria Friday 13 April signed an agreement calling for Swiss banks to withhold tax on income from offshore accounts held by Austrian citizens. The account holders will then have to decide to either forfeit the tax or declare the accounts. The agreement is similar to those signed by Germany and the UK and, like those, opens up the Austrian financial services market to Swiss companies.
A flat-rate one-off payment “for regularizing the past” is 15-38 percent depending on the size of the assets and how long the client has had the banking relationship. A single rate of 25 percent will apply for future investment income taxation, which Bern explains corresponds to Austria’s capital gains tax. Austria has no inheritance tax, so this is not an issue.
Bern’s statement Friday afternoon states bluntly that Switzerland “does not want any further untaxed assets in the future”. It noted that “both sides acknowledge that the agreed system will have a long-term impact that is equivalent to the automatic exchange of information in the area of capital income.”
It outlined how the deal will work:
“Under this agreement, persons resident in Austria can retrospectively tax their existing banking relationships in Switzerland either by making a one-off tax payment or by disclosing their accounts. Future investment income of Austrian bank clients in Switzerland will be subject to a withholding tax, and the proceeds of this will be transferred anonymously to the Austrian authorities by Switzerland. In addition, mutual market access for financial services will be improved. The agreement requires the approval of parliament in both countries, and should enter into force at the start of 2013.”
Switzerland and Austria in tax deal negotiations
Swiss President Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland cannot make more concessions as part of tax treaties with Germany and the US while respecting Swiss law, Swiss President Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf says in a lengthy interviewed published by Zurich newspaper NZZ 13 April. The Swiss president says, however, that the US case against St Gallen bank Wegelin has left open the possibility that the Swiss government may take some Swiss banks to court to avoid letting individual banks pose a threat to the entire system.
She says in the interview that the Swiss government has already completed reviews of a number of bank client cases requested by the US government and many stand unchallenged.
The Federal Administrative Court decision this week in favour of a Credit Suisse client’s opposition to his bank data being given to the US covers just one category of clients, she points out, and should not have a major impact on the overall situation. But it will oblige the US to be more precise when it makes requests for administrative assistance in suspected tax fraud cases.
Widmer-Schlumpf also clarified that Switzerland is seeking two agreements with the US, one that would provide a framework in which the 11 Swiss banks under investigation by the US would negotiate fines with the US Justice Department, and another that would cover 300 other Swiss banks’ past activities to end the US starting new legal proceedings every year. Switzerland is not in negotiations with the US over amounts of fines for the 11; this is up to the banks themselves, she says, but Bern is discussing sums with the US for the Swiss banking industry as a whole, to settle potential differences over past activities. The accords could be intergovernmental agreements or treaties, she notes.
The tax treaty with Germany, already signed by both governments but not yet passed by their parliaments, has been the subject of heated debate in Germany. Widmer-Schlumpf says that if the new treaty as it now stands is not what Germans want, then the best solution is the status quo. The new double taxation treaty would require Swiss banks to charge a withholding tax on income earned by German citizens’ accounts, which they would then have the option to reclaim by declaring the income and thus their assets.
A similar treaty was signed with Britain. The European Union has objected to the bilateral agreements, arguing for a single solution. Widmer-Schlumpf confirmed in the NZZ interview that negotiations are underway with Austria and other states have expressed interest in similar agreements.
Geneva, Switzerland: candidate to host the Green Climate Fund permanent secretariat
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland officially presented Geneva Thursday 12 April as a candidate to host the Green Climate Fund permanent secretariat. Switzerland is also running for a seat on the GCF’s Executive Board.
Germany and South Korea are currently the only other candidates. The provisional seat is in Bonn.
The GCF was created in 2010, with the Cancun agreements, and is designed is to administer tens of billions of dollars to help developing countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and “undertake the measures necessary to adapt to climate change”, says Bern.
In the start-up phase, the World Bank is to act as trustee for the GCF in its start-up phase. The Fund is scheduled to have a permanent secretariat by 2014.
Bern and the canton of Geneva argue that the city is well-suited to be the GCF’s host, noting in a federal government statement that Geneva is “a strategically significant location for political and scientific work in the environmental domain, and increasingly in the climate domain as well. The GCF fits very well into this institutional landscape and can contribute significantly to enhancing international Geneva.”
It lists other agencies and groups that make up this “a major hub for international environmental policy “:
- the headquarters of the World Meteorological Organization
- the Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the Global Earth Observation Initiative.
- in 2011 Geneva was designated as the location for the Secretariat of the Global Framework for Climate Services.
- A Regional Office of the United Nations Environment Programme is located in Geneva.
- the World Bank and the UNDP, active in environmental financing, have offices in Geneva.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – A Spanish judge investigating a corruption case involving the king of Spain’s son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarín, 10 April ordered the freezing of Swiss bank accounts used for “opaque payments”. The case, which has gripped Spain for weeks, flared up again with the announcement. But a spokesperson for the Swiss Federal Justice Office, which handles foreign requests to block accounts, told GenevaLunch 12 April that the office “has no knowledge of a request for judicial assistance in this case”.
A foreigner’s bank account in Switzerland cannot be blocked except by order of the Swiss government after it receives a request from foreign government authorities or in some cases, such as the fall of dictators, the Federal Council will act on its own.
Urdangarín, a former Olympic handball player married to the king’s daughter, Cristina, has been accused of siphoning euros 5.8 million of public funds intended for the Noos Institute, a Spanish non-profit foundation, which he headed between 2004 and 2006. The institute sponsored sports and tourism congresses with the regional financial backing of Valencia and the Balearic Islands.
Swiss accounts resurface during testimony
The Duke of Palma, as he is also known, was jeered at as he entered court in February, the Guardian reported at the time. The lengthy interrogation that followed turned up an Irish fiduciary, Alternative General Services Ltd, that was allegedly involved in transferring payments.
The Lake Geneva region and Ticino show the highest percentage of mental health problems, with figures based in part on questionnaires
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The extent of mental illness in Switzerland have remained relatively stable for the past 10 years, a new report by the Federal Health Office shows.
The cost in economic terms is CHF11 billion a year, with a large part of this due to indirect costs such as absenteeism and early retirement.
The number of people who seek treatment remains very low, rising from only 4 percent to 5 percent between 1997 and 2007.
The report, released 12 April, is the third such review by the office. While 74 percent of the population describe themselves as feeling full of energy and optimistic most of the time, 19 percent have said in surveys that they are affected moderately or more seriously by mental health problems, including 4 percent of the population that is handicapped by a debilitating mental health problem.
The figures are based on a combination of statistics and several different surveys by federal departments.
The Lake Geneva region and Ticino continue to have a higher incidence of mental health ailments than German-speaking Switzerland. Serious mental health problems affect women and young people more often than men and the elderly, but milder forms of depression are more prevalent among women and older people, the report’s statistics show.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The six thermal baths resorts in canton Valais are joining forces for marketing purposes and investing CFH100 to increase Valais’s attraction as a thermal spa centre, they announced Wednesday 11 April. Two-thirds of the money will go to more hotel beds and the rest to improving the baths.
The six are: Breiten, Brigerbad, Leukerbad, Saillon, Ovronnaz and Val d’Illiez. The projects for each vary, from Brigerbad’s consstruction of an indoor centre to Ovronnaz will get a new spa and Saillon a new hotel.
Leukerbad (Loeche-les-bain in French), with 10 thermal baths, is building an apart-hotel as its share in the improvements
Decision says US request was not in line with tax agreement
Tribunal confirms to GenevaLunch that decision was based on 1996 agreement
Update 2 15:00 BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss Administrative Court has struck a blow to US-Swiss tax administrative assistance discussions, ruling in favour of a Credit Suisse client who appealed a decision by Bern to hand over some bank account data to the IRS, the US government’s tax office.
The court notes, in a statement that could have wider implications, that “the Court reaffirms its case law that under the DTC USA-Switzerland 96 administrative assistance shall not be granted for presumed tax evasion, even if high amounts are at stake. It also confirms that the mere failure to declare a bank account may be qualified – at the utmost – as a tax evasion, which is not subject to administrative assistance.”
A court spokesperson told GenevaLunch that “The Court took its decision regarding the said case applying the agreement in force, ie the Double Taxation Convention USA-Switzerland 96″ since the new amendment is pending in the US Senate.
The Financial Times last month pointed out that “Legally, ratification of the change – via an amendment to a bilateral double tax treaty – has been blocked in the US Senate by presidential candidate Ron Paul.”
The court’s decision is final in Switzerland and cannot be appealed to the Swiss Supreme Court, the federal administrative judges note. The court rules on appeals to decisions made by the federal government and is the final authority for these; it is Switzerland’s largest federal court, with 75 judges.
No official government comment yet
The Swiss Federal Council has not yet issued a statement commenting on the ruling, which appears to complicate ongoing discussions about applying the newly approved double taxation agreement of 2009. The Swiss Parliament approved it 6 March, but the US Congress has not debated it or approved it. The amendment allows bank client data to be provided in some cases of suspected tax evasion and not just fraud, even if client names are not provided in a demand for administrative assistance.
Court’s review of US request shows conditions not met
The US asked for administrative assistance 26 September 2011 concerning clients at 11 Swiss banks. The court ruled 5 April, and published the results 11 April, that the requests were “too vague” and did not comply with the current treaty:
“The Federal Administrative Court concluded that the ‘search criteria’ for the identification of bank clients (category 2), as set out in the request for administrative assistance, are formulated in terms encompassing above all mere tax evasion, for which administrative assistance cannot be granted according to the applicable Double Taxation Convention USA-Switzerland 96. This is inconsistent with the principle of proportionality, which applies to proceedings regarding administrative assistance as well.”
The only fraudulent behaviour may be that of some Credit Suisse employees, it says, but that cannot be extended to the client in the case under review.
“The request for administrative assistance does not indicate the names of the bank clients, but only describes the above-mentioned conduct of the CS employees. Furthermore, it contains four categories of identification criteria, through which the bank can determine the clients concerned by the request for administrative assistance.
“The Federal Administrative Court holds that the conduct of the CS employees, as set forth in the request for administrative assistance, from which the conduct of the clients themselves may also be deduced, is covered by the term ‘tax fraud or the like’ in the sense of the DTC USA-Switzerland 96.”
New rules more flexible, but US requests cannot be vague
The new amendment was widely reported to be more flexible but Swiss cautionary notes that “fishing expeditions” would still not be allowed were glossed over by media. The court decision underscores the vagueness of the IRS request.
The Swiss federal government clarified the situation in a report published 10 February, a month before the parliament’s vote, “Report on international financial and tax matters 2012″:
“Switzerland has been holding talks with the United States on unresolved tax issues for more than a year. These talks relate to the US investigations into alleged infringements of US tax legislation by Swiss banks and the potential handover of client data. Under Swiss law, client data may be handed over as part of an administrative assistance procedure at federal level, but not directly by a bank. The objective of the negotiations with the US authorities is to find a solution that is compatible with Switzerland’s current legal framework.
“The cases of the directly affected banks are to be dealt with through requests for administrative assistance: in the case of tax fraud in accordance with the existing double taxation agreement (DTA) of 1996, and in the case of both tax fraud and tax evasion in accordance with the new – but not yet ratified – DTA of 2009. Under the existing DTA, requests for assistance are possible even without the provision of specific names or personal details, as long as an alternative form of identification is supplied. Applications on the basis of specific patterns of behaviour should also be possible under the new DTA without the provision of specific names or personal details.”
Update: Interviews in French on RTS news with the president of the Tribunal, who says another 30 similar cases are in line to be reviewed by the court, and with a lawyer who notes that if the new amendment to the treaty were in effect the court might have ruled differently.
The search for work continues - Photopress/Martin Ruetschi
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland’s unemployment rate fell from 3.4 to 3.2 percent in March, despite government predictions that it will slowly climb during the rest of this year. The jobless rate in canton Valais, which traditionally has one of the highest unemployment rates after Geneva, fell by 0.9 percent, compared to the national drop of 0.2 percent, the biggest improvement of any canton.
Geneva remains the canton with the highest unemployment rate, at 5.3 percent for March, but the difference compared to other regions is diminishing: Vaud in March was 5.2 and Neuchatel and Ticino were both at 4.8 percent.
Geneva’s jobless rate has been falling steadily, from 7 percent in 2010 to 6 percent last year and 5.5 percent for 2012 to date. Valais in March had an unemployment rate of 4.1 percent.
Finance jobs took a dip, although the hiring situation for the big banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, has improved slightly.
March saw 25 percent fewer finance jobs being offered than a year earlier, with 35 percent fewer in the banking industry, while the insurance industry was less affected. Half of the open jobs were in Zurich, with only 17 percent in French-speaking Switzerland.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – GenevaLunch is taking a two-day break from the news for the Easter holiday, celebrated throughout Switzerland and France.
The weather forecast might keep many of us indoors at least part of the time: lows of 2-3C and highs of 7-8C with occasional showers.
Happy holidays from the GenevaLunch team!
Two-wheelers can expect police checks
Police in Switzerland step up preventive actions when the weather turns warm and bikers take to the road and particularly to winding mountain roads (photo, Valais Alps)
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Police in canton Vaud are repeating what they say was a successful preventive project a year ago, to alert motorcyclists to dangers over the Easter weekend.
Police teams will be visibly out in a number of areas to encourage motorcyclists to give their bikes safety checks and to openly discourage them from using stretches of road that are popular with bikers for racing.
Eight motorcyclists lost their lives on Vaud roads in 2011 and six were caused by the motorcycle drivers, statistics released in late March show.
The dates and places where police say they will be very much in evidene:
Friday 6 April, Nyon route Blanche and La Givrine route de St-Cergue
Saturday 7 April, Ste-Croix route de Mauborget and Col du Mollendruz
Sunday 8 April, Château d’Oex route de l’Etivaz and Col des Mosses
Monday 9 April, Crissier rue du Timonet and RC Lausanne-Vevey Sous-Dézaley.
Swiss autoroute jam earlier in the week, on the A9
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – The Gotthard tunnel at noon Friday 6 March had stationary traffic for 9 km on the north side, as Good Friday traffic builds up, the federal road service’s Truckinfo site shows. Traffic is very slow heading south from Chur due congested conditions, but several other parts of the country, particularly autoroutes around urban centres, have very slow traffic doe to accidents and road works.
The site is updated every five minutes.
Check the Easter traffic alert from the Swiss highway department for peak times on main routes.
Media charges of tense relations over tax issues denied by both governments
German political world, media reactions mixed
BERN, SWITZERLAND – German and Switzerland signed a “Supplemental Protocol” to their September 2011 tax agreement, Thursday 5 April. Bern issued a statement noting that “The essence of the agreement remains unchanged, that the taxation of German capital assets in Switzerland is ensured for the present and the future and thereby places relations between Switzerland and Germany on a forward-looking basis.” The new protocol and agreement are now ready for the countries parliaments to review.
The German government, like the Swiss government earlier in the week, denied press stories that relations are strained over another tax issue, arrest warrants issued by canton Zurich’s attorney general for three German tax collectors, linked to data that was stolen from a Swiss bank in 2008.
But in Germany, the political left reacted negatively while the media reaction was “more nuanced”, reports Swiss public broadcasting, adding that there is little likelihood yet more concessions on the part of Switzerland would muster support here.
The details of the new agreement, as listed in the Swiss statement, are likely to prove interesting to other governments looking for ways to force their citizens to declare tax money they have hidden in Switzerland:
- “After the agreement has come into force, inheritances which occur will be covered. In the case of inheritance, heirs must consent either to collection of a 50% tax or disclosure.
- “In the case of flat-rate taxation of the past, the size of the tax burden has been increased. Instead of being between 19% and 34% as it was up to now, the tax rate is now at least 21% and no more than 41%.
- “In addition the number of possible requests for information after entry into force of the agreement have been increased from a maximum of 999 to a maximum of 1,300 within a period of two years. This option extends and supplements the exchange of information according to the OECD minimum standard.
- “With the entry into force of the agreement on 1 January 2013, German taxpayers will no longer be able to shift assets out of Switzerland to third countries without notification. The appointed deadline was brought forward from 31 May 2013 to 1 January 2103.
- “It was made clear that interest payments which are covered by the Taxation of Savings Income Agreement with the European Union or will be covered by this in future, will be excluded from the scope of the agreement. In this way, the concerns of the EU Commission regarding compatibility with EU law have been removed as was the case with the tax agreement between Switzerland and the UK.
- “The regulations on the distribution in Germany of the revenue generated will be taken from the tax agreement. Within the scope of a German legislative procedure concerning the one-off flat-rate tax payment a higher proportion of the German Länder and communes will receive payment than would have resulted from the distribution key in the case of tax on investment income.
- “Individual models which come under the anti-abuse provision will now be described. In addition, monitoring implementation of the agreement by the competent Swiss authority and by an independent auditing company and the appointment of German Länder representatives on the so-called joint commission has been specifically laid down.”
Vercorin, canton Valais, in the heart of Alpine resort country
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Swiss citizens voted 11 March to put a cap of 20 percent on second homes as a proportion of any commune, throughout the country, but putting the law into effect is proving complicated.
The working group set up by the federal government to sort out the problems that have surfaced since the vote held their first meeting Tuesday 3 April in Bern to deal with the most urgent issues and set priorities.
The vote will require changes to existing laws, notably land use management legislation.
The first problem is to precisely define second homes, which the popular initiative voted into law did not do. Legal provisions covering the transition of a residence from secondary to primary or vice versa need to be reviewed to see how they are affected by the vote.
And the group will need to make recommendations for the treatment of existing buildings. Alpine resort areas are most affected: in Grimentz and St Luc in Valais and Laar in Graubuenden, for example, second homes make up more than 80 percent of the homes.
Four cantons have average rates above 20 percent: Graubuenden, Valais, Ticino and Obwald. By comparison, in Vaud the figure is 13 percent and in Geneva 11.2 percent.
The federal government noted in a study before the election that in some areas, where the infrastructure is weak, the high proportion of second homes is due to the population leaving rather than to an influx of newcomers.
Switzerland has an estimated half million second homes, with most of them not “commercialized” according to the pre-vote report. Their rate of occupancy is 30-40 days a year, rising to about 60 days a year if they are loaned or rented to family and friends. This low rate of occupancy, or cold beds as this is popularly known, was part of the drive behind the new law.
The working group will begin to consult with interested groups by mid-April with a goal of clarifying by the end of the summer legislative break the most urgent issues in terms of ordinances, then to begin work on the changes to the law.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Business highlights Wednesday 4 April include:
- Iata, the airline industry organization, says that traffic increased in February, up 8.6 percent for passenger traffic and 5.2 percent for cargo, but it cautions that with petrol prices rising the outlook remains fragile.
- Coty, American beauty company that also owns a number of top clothing brands such as Jill Sander and Adidas, is turning its Versoix office, opened in 2005, into a third international head office, just as the company announced its proposal to buy out Avon, a deal worth $10 billion. The Geneva office the company says in a press release, “will complement Coty headquarters activities in New York, US, and Paris, France.With a goal of further developing cross-divisional and joint headquarters collaboration among Coty professionals, the Geneva office forms a third component in Coty’s corporate headquarters structure. It includes a state-of-the-art research and development group linked to a fragrance center of excellence, global and regional commercial teams for Coty beauty and Coty prestige divisions, procurement and supply chain operations, and a regional Northern European finance center.”
- LeShop published its first quarter results Wednesday, showing a first-ever dip in sales, down 7 percent compared to the previous year: CHF38.5 million. The company notes that sales nevertheless remain strong despite the strong Swiss franc, which is responsible for cross-border shopping tourism. Mobile phones sales continue to grow strongly, up 12 percent, and they now accoount for one in eight purchases.
- Solar Impulse is warming up for a 2,500km solar-powered-only flight to Morocco in May or June, its first venture beyond Europe and over a large body of water, the Mediterranean. The trip will coincide “with the launch of construction in the region of Ouarzazate of the largest thermo-solar power plant ever built.” It will serve as the warmup for a planned 2014 round the world trip using only solar power.
- Roche, Basel-based pharmaceutical company, says it is “very disappointed” by the refusal of the board of Illumina to accept a higher buyout bid and it is now turning to shareholders to ask them to voter 18 April for the takeover.
The newly expanded WRS newsroom in 2009
Update 12:15 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – WRS, World Radio Switzerland, says Wednesday morning 4 April, that SSR (Swiss public broadcasting, also known as SRG), its parent company, is considering the possibility of selling the station and privatizing it or closing it down.
The station cites SSR chief executive officer Roger de Weck as saying English-language radio should no longer be publicly funded. De Weck was formerly president of the Graduate Institute in Geneva, took over at the helm of SSR in January 2011.
The station called in a media observer this morning to comment on the situation.
The station was formerly the private station WRG, World Radio Geneva, but SSR, which had been a partner, took it over in 2007. Three years later the station added several hours of programming and began to work with NPR in the US as well as the BBC for broader news coverage, part of its extension as a national rather than local radio station.
Mark Butcher and Peter Sibley, who created the online and cable station Radio Frontier in June 2011, as the linchpin of their company Anglo Media, reacted to the news in a statement saying the company ” believes the closure of an English language FM station is potentially a backward step” but that they sympathize “with the financial pressure the SSR has to face up to – many public broadcasters across Europe have made similar tough decisions.” They believe “the private sector has to be given the opportunity to provide these essential information services,” noting that they are talking to all parties concerned.
Butcher, who spoke to GenevaLunch Wednesday morning, says that as a former WRG and then WRS announcer he is “obviously sad for the people who work there” but that he does “understand the situation that Swiss Public Broadcasting finds itself in,” citing Europe-wide radio difficulties.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Geneva’s Palais, home to the UN in Geneva, has begun the biggest makeover in its history, and not too soon, says the UN, which recently issued un update on the dire state of the Neo-classic buildings that date to 1929. The League of Nations took up residence in 1936 and then the United Nations in 1946. The UN created a Strategic Heritage Plan for repairs and renovations in 2007, then began to look for funds.
The new director general of the United Nations office in Geneva, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, met in Bern Tuesday 3 April with Didier Burkhalter, Swiss federal councilor and minster for foreign affairs, to sign papers for Switzerland’s contribution to the renovation project. The overall cost of the eight-year project wa estimated at CHF618 million in 2010. Switzerland in 2011 pledged CHF50 million to energy-related measures as part of the plan.
The buildings provide one of the largest conference centres in Europe, with 34 meeting rooms and halls and 2,000 offices.
Some 4,000 UN staff work at the Palais building, which has about 100,000 visitors a year.
The federal government noted in signing the check Tuesday that Geneva’s international role remains a pillar of the country’s foreign policy. Switzerland is home to 25 international organizations, of which 22 are in Geneva, and the city is also home to 7 other international organizations that have fiscal agreements with Switzerland. Another 250 international bodies in Geneva “act as advisors” to the UN, says Bern.
Editor’s note: Le Point in France carries an article with details about the repairs that need to be carried out.
Renovated Musée d'Orsay in Paris during filming for Google's Art Project
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The Olympic Museum in Lausanne has provided the Google Art Project with 104 artworks by 33 artists, from its collection.
The museum is one of 155 worldwide to share part of their collection online and it is the first in Switzerland to do so.
Art Project now includes Hans Erni’s 1983 “Basketball” sculpture and paintings series, Dennis Openheim’s “Olympic Centennial Newton Discovering Gravity” and a series of Rosa Serra’s elegant black sports figures sculptures.
The project started a year ago, with 17 museums and 1,000 artworks, but as Google points out, it was “almost all paintings from Western masters.
Today, the Art Project includes more than 30,000 high-resolution artworks, with Street View images for 46 museums, with more on the way. In other words, the Art Project is no longer just about the Indian student wanting to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
It is now also about the American student wanting to visit the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi.”
The collection houses an extraordinary variety, and some of the partner sampler pages are fun, such as a moving (in every sense) video visit to the White House in the US.
The expanded gallery, which Google presented in Paris Tuesday 3 April, has several new features. Among them:
- Street View images are now displayed in finer quality. A specially designed Street View trolley took 360-degree images of the interior of selected galleries which were then stitched together, enabling smooth navigation of more than 385 rooms within the museums. You can also explore the gallery interiors directly from within Street View in Google Maps.
- 46 artworks are available with Gogle’s gigapixel photo-capturing technology, “photographed in extraordinary detail using super high resolution so you can study details of the brushwork and patina that would be impossible to see with the naked eye.”
- A bonus for students and teachers in particular is a new My Gallery feature that lets viewers make their own collections, add comments to each painting and share the whole collection.
How to use Google Art Project video
Meet US Ambassador Donald Beyer, the Embassy staff and US Consular staff and discuss the concerns of Americans living overseas. The fourth of five Town Hall Meetings.
Location: Lausanne, Switzerland
Link out: http://blog.democrats.ch/
Date: 18 Apr 2012
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – The dust was starting to settle over the tax deal between Switzerland and Germany Friday 30 March when a new whirlwind was kicked up with the Swiss asking for German assistance in charges brought against three German tax inspectors.
The Swiss Federal Tax Office announced late Friday that the German government had confirmed during the day it intends to approve the tax deal, which has caused heated debate in the European Union. Switzerland had asked for clarification of the situation by the end of March in order to put the new agreement into effect at the start of 2013, as planned.
Agreements with Britain and Germany were two of the nearly 40 revised double taxation agreements Switzerland has drawn up with other countries since it agreed to follow OECD recommendations in this area, but they prompted negative reactions from the EU, which threatened to take its two member states to court. Earlier this month the UK and Switzerland signed their deal, which goes into effect in January 2013.
The German agreement is similar to the UK one in that it calls for a withholding tax on income from accounts in Switzerland held by Germans but an important element for the German government is a one-off payment by German citizens on capital in Switzerland to settle past unpaid taxes. The statement by the Swiss did not clarify the amount of the withholding tax, which some media are reporting is still being negotiated. The treaty that was negotiated and initialed in August 2011, listed as 25 percent at the time.
The German SPD opposition party insists the treaty will have trouble getting approval by the Bundesrat (parliament).
Industrial spying charges add new twist to tax chases
Saturday the Swiss attorney general announced his office has issued arrest warrants for three German tax inspectors who are accused of accepting stolen goods in a case that dates back to February 2010. The three are accused of industrial espionage in accepting bank data offered to them on a CD in 2008.
Reuters cites him as saying in a statement that “There is a concrete suspicion that specific orders from Germany were issued to use espionage to obtain information from Credit Suisse. The attorney general has asked German authorities for assistance.”
Swiss calves, just too cute to resist? Wohlen, Switzerland
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Farmers Andreas and Franziska Knutti have been completely caught by surprise by the media hype from abroad over their six-legged calf Lilli. Blick ran the story, which was picked up by AP in English and other languages, and soon the family was receiving media calls from The Netherlands and Sweden, reports local paper BernerZeitung, which says the Knuttis have been taken aback by the massive interest in a freak event in nature.
Ironically, since many of the headlines are about Lilli the Swiss media star, there has been very limited interest in the story in Switzerland, where cute calves are the norm, farmers are used to dealing with animals’ problems, and the main question about Lilli now seems to be why a birth defect is making her such a hit elsewhere.
The emphasis abroad has been on the calve’s perky nature, but the farming couple are reported by Swiss-German media to say they’ll have to see how her development goes; one of their concerns is to be sure she doesn’t suffer pain, for example, back pain from the extra legs as she grows.
Two earlier calves with six legs failed to gain the same notoriety
Lissy in Bavaria in 2009 had a similar birth defect and nobody paid much attention.
Extra limbs are unusual but the hype over Lilli may be linked to the need for Internet media to boost news page numbers with colourful stories, tabloid style, and the photos of Lilli show a pert little calf. And calves that grow up give milk and from milk the Swiss make chocolate and ca, c’est vachement bon!
The Milwaukee Journal ran a story in 1996 when a Cuba City couple had a calf with six legs, with two on the back just as Lilli and Lissy have had, but as a PIC (pre-Internet calf), you won’t find much about it, including whether or not it lived to a ripe old age. Also, it was a boy, and try as you might, you won’t make chocolate from that.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The possibility that the bus crash that killed 28 and injured 24 people in Sierre, Valais was caused by the driver handling a DVD has been ruled out by the chief investigator, Olivier Elsig. He and a team of investigators returned Friday 30 March to Switzerland from Belgium after interviewing several of the Belgian and Dutch children who were injured. They also examined closely a bus identical to the one that crashed. The DVD compartment was behind the driver and would have required a set of maneuvers that rule out this possibility.
The bus is still being examined to see if there were technical problems.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss women’s ski team has quickly found a new boss, Austrian Hans Flatscher, who has been the men’s downhill coach. He replaces Mauro Pini, who said a week ago that he would be leaving, in the wake of tensions after he fired a trainer who was well liked by several of the women on the team. The women had a poor season in terms of wins. Flatscher, in his eight years with the men’s team, has coached several top downhill skiers, and before he joined the Swiss team he worked in Germany and Austria.
Police in Vaud and Geneva join forces to combat cross-border theft
Number of assaults in Geneva fell in 2011
Violent crimes fell in Geneva in 2011: orange shows simple injuries and yellow serious plus homicides (Source: Geneva Police / OFS statistics)
GENEVA / LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Geneva tops the Swiss list for a 2011 rise in property crimes, including break-ins and theft, but Lausanne, Basel, Bern and Zurich also saw increases last year that outpaced population growth and were well above the national average of 71 per 1,000 inhabitants.
Geneva’s violent crimes, including all degrees and forms of assault, fell in 2011, however; one exception was the increase from 4 (2008) to 15 knife attacks, in four years.
Urban border regions in western Switzerland in particular have seen cross-border burglary increases and Tuesday the cantonal ministers in charge of police for Geneva and Vaud announced a joint task force to step up coordination with French police to tackle the problem.
They are also calling for tougher penalties against repeat offenders and note that the “Lake Geneva region appears to have become a privileged target for robbers.”
Two features of the cross-border crime that are worrying police in Geneva, reports swissinfo, are the number of under-age Balkans working in theft in a stretch from Milan to Paris and a shift from street crime to burglaries by a group of about 400 North Africans living illegally in Geneva.
Burglaries in Geneva rose 29 percent in 2011, break-ins 19 percent and vehicle theft 9 percent
The new European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics 2010 indicates that Switzerland has one of the highest rates of criminal problems linked to migration, but the most recent figures are five years old, covering 2003-2007, and European reporting standards differ. The UK, for example, records ethnic background rather than nationality for criminals arrested, while Switzerland, which has one of Europe’s highest rates of resident foreigners, lists nationality.
Geneva and Basel are the only two cantons with 2011 crime rates higher than 100 per 1,000: 159 for Geneva and 119 for Basel (source: Swiss Federal Statistical Office)
Crime statistics for Switzerland for 2011 were released Monday by the Federal Statistical Office in Neuchatel, and include cantonal details.
Cantonal police have been releasing highway and accident statistics in the past few days.
Overall, numbers show a mixed safety picture, with property crimes up, more foreigners entering and re-entering the country illegally and who are often linked to other crimes.
Nationwide, violent crimes are down by 7 percent and in the Lake Geneva region there were fewer road accidents.
Geneva was the subject of much media hype in 2011 about personal safety and crime but the statistics don’t bear out complaints that the city is unsafe, physically, although residents and visitors would do well to watch their cars, motorbikes and bags, with theft on the rise.
Vaud saw its overall crime rate jump 18.6 percent, with a 14 percent increase in break-ins and 7 percent increase in robberies. Country-wide the rate of break-ins rose 16 percent. Car theft was up by 4 percent.
A concern in Vaud is the “massive presence of Bulgarian and Romanian prostitutes, implying a potential problem with human trafficking,” the canton notes in a press release. Police closed down immediately 7 of the more than 700 massage parlours they checked during the year.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The number of assisted suicides in Switzerland of people who are permanent residents in the country, appeared to rise during the first decade in which statistics were kept, 1998-2009. Three hundred people committed assisted suicide, which is legal, in 2009, giving a ratio of 4.8 out of 1,000 deaths. International comparisons are not possible on any scale because of wide differences in how countries deal with this, from no legislation to very strict laws.
But Switzerland sits in the middle of two other European countries that permit it and have been keeping records: Belgium shows 7.9 and The Netherlands 2.3 per 1,000 deaths, but Bern cautions that the statistics rely on the cause listed by a doctor on a death certificate.
The Swiss Federal Council in June 2011 decided not to legislate in this area, following a Zurich vote rejecting a law for that canton. The council agreed to do more to prevent suicides and to improve palliative care.
A national debate was prompted in part by the growing international attention, particularly from Britain, on assisted suicide tourism. Estimates vary from 100 to 200 foreigners a year coming to Switzerland for assisted suicide, mainly at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich.
The deaths in Switzerland are linked to a number of initial causes: cancer, 44 percent, neurodegenerative disease 14 percent, cardiovascular disease 9 percent, movement disorders 6 percent.
Ninety-percent of the people who choose assisted suicide are over age 55. Three percent of cases involve depression and dementia is mentioned in 0.3 percent.
Zurich, with 5.6 per 1,000 and Geneva, with 4.4 per 1,000, had the highest numbers and ratios.
