Delano March / April 2020 by Maison Moderne

No. 71 MARCH/APRIL 2020

TIGHTENING THE PURSE STRINGS

38 EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT An interview with Monica Semedo as she relishes her new role as an MEP

42 MOTORING How the government’s environmental policy is changing driving habits and making car ownership more expensive

28 ECONOMY

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Coping with the crunch 5 453000 010015 71

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No. 71

Is the spiralling cost of living causing increased economic insecurity? What can be done to halt the rise of in-work poverty?

Politics

Tricky balancing act a honeymoon period as minister for the economy, never mind his other role as minister for development cooperation and humanitarian affairs. Having hit the ground running, Fayot had nothing but respect for his predecessor when giving interviews in the first few days on the job. He noted in particular Étienne Schneider’s efforts in creating a space resources sector and his determination to implement a third industrial revolution strategy for the grand duchy. But he repeatedly stressed that, under his stewardship, the ministry would strive to create a more sustainable economy, “to think about the economy of tomorrow”. The one question posed to Fayot time and time again was how being a socialist would determine his management of the ministry. Given that Schneider was also a member of the LSAP, the question acknowledges the reputation Fayot has as being more left-leaning than his predecessor. Former CSV finance minister Luc Frieden, now chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, has said that in the past Fayot didn’t exactly make “extremely pro-business statements”. Indeed, according to a profile in the Luxemburger Wort--a newspaper whose board is chaired by Frieden--Fayot is an admirer of French economist Thomas Piketty and has been on record as saying that Luxembourg should steer a course away from the neo-liberal economic policies that have dominated since the 1980s. That sets him apart from a succession of LSAP economy ministers including Jacques Poos, Robert Goebbels, Jeannot Krecké and then Schneider. Only the DP’s Henri Grethen (from 1999 to 2004) has interrupted the socialist party’s hold on the job since 1984.

No. 71

Upon them fell the onerous task of steering the economy through the

MARCH/APRIL 2020

TIGHTENING THE PURSE STRINGS

much-vaunted “diversification” that led to Luxembourg become a pillar of financial services, as well as exploring new activity areas that has seen

38 EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT An interview with Monica Semedo as she relishes her new role as an MEP.

the grand duchy target the likes of health tech, logistics and space resources

42 MOTORING How the government’s environmental policy is changing driving habits and making car ownership more expensive.

as potential sources of income and employment.

28 ECONOMY

MARCH/APRIL

Coping with the crunch

2020

010015 71

€4

001_FC_Front cover.indd 1

attitude to business. He sees the economy not as a means to an end, but

5 453000

No. 71

Is the spiraling cost of living causing increased economic insecurity? What can be done to halt the rise of in-work poverty?

Fayot insists he is a friend of entrepreneurs, but not of a laissez-faire

05/03/2020 15:05

↑

ILLUSTRATING DELANO Angus Greig is an illustrator and designer currently living in the UK. He has worked as a visiting lecturer alongside his practice, where clients have included The New York Times, The Economist and Le Monde. ↳ www.angusgreig.com

as an essential element for the well-being of the country and its people. He says he wants to act in the interests of bosses and entrepreneurs, but also of employees and consumers. Coupled with a desire to improve sustainability, and the fact that Schneider had been one of the most respected cabinet members in the current government, Fayot is setting himself up for a near impossible balancing act. We wish him luck. Duncan Roberts Editor-in-chief

Letter from the editor

Five weeks after he took up post, Franz Fayot has had little time to enjoy

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March/April 2020 Reporting on the community

FEATURES

Analysis of business, the economy and politics

THE SOURCE

A guide to culture and lifestyle

PART OF THE COMMUNITY

Interview

THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE Claude Bertemes on the Cinémathèque in the digital age

9 CRAFTING EMPOWERMENT

On stage

GOING ON A WANDER

ACCLAIMED THEATRE AND BEST INDIE FESTIVAL

12 THE ICING ON THE CAKE

14 THE KNIWWELINO CONNECTION

16 In my suitcase

BADGES OF HONOUR What Elaine Ganouni-Jensen brought when she moved here

Cover story

Get the picture

COPING WITH THE CRUNCH More of the working poor and even “expats” are facing “economic insecurity”. What’s behind the pinch?

EARTH EXTINCTION

60 Asset management

AML UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

38 AN EU CLOSER TO THE PEOPLE Monica Semedo talks about her first six months as an MEP

Education & training

62 ESG POLICY TAKES SHAPE

64 42 DRIVING CHANGE Will fuel tax cause motoring habits to evolve?

LIQUIDITY TESTING

66 ETF PRESSURE

18 Community spotlight

A BRIGHTER FUTURE Syrians Elian Habra and Lama Alogli on life in Luxembourg

20 Snapshots

COMMUNITY & NETWORKING

46 Reportage

IN THE BAG Inside the Red Cross blood transfusion centre

52 DATA CENTRE QUESTIONS How green is IT in Luxembourg? Hard to say

86 BOOST YOURSELF AND YOUR KIDS Feed curiosity and get certified

92 Restaurant review

LA RÉSERVE

94 Kids page

EASTER TRADITIONS

68 MARKETING TO MILLENNIALS

98 Auntie Eleanor

72 Interview

EMOTIONALLY WIRED

72 Delano Live

DISTURBING DATA ABUSE

TAKE IT TO THE BRIDGE Our advice columnist on vacation days, climate change, the royals and chocolate cake

Contents

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Write to PO Box 728 L-2017 Luxembourg Offices 10 rue des Gaulois, Luxembourg-Bonnevoie ISSN 2220-5535 Web www.maisonmoderne.com Founder and chairman Mike Koedinger CEO Richard Karacian Administrative and financial director Etienne Velasti CONTENTS Phone (+352) 20 70 70-150 Fax (+352) 29 66 19 E-mail news@delano.lu Publisher Richard Karacian Editorial director Matthieu Croissandeau Editor-in-chief Duncan Roberts (duncan.roberts@maisonmoderne.com) Desk editor Aaron Grunwald (aaron.grunwald@maisonmoderne.com) Journalists Jess Bauldry (jessica.bauldry@maisonmoderne.com) Natalie Gerhardstein (natalie.gerhardstein@maisonmoderne.com) Contributor Stephen Evans Photography Romain Gamba, Jan Hanrion, LaLa La Photo, Gaël Lesure, Patricia Pitsch, Mike Zenari, Matic Zorman Proofreading Lisa Cacciatore, Sarah Lambolez, Manon Méral, Elena Sebastiani

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The Journal

Consumer rights

Reporting on the community

MARCH/APRIL 2020

↑ European Court of Justice ruling Passengers can seek compensation for cancelled connecting flights where their itinerary started, even when it was scratched in a different jurisdiction.

Ciaran O’Flatharta and the Gaelic Sports Club Luxembourg want you to try Irish sports

Part of the community Most Irish kids have spent at least some time playing in the Gaelic Athletic Association and it’s often their first experience

with team sport. “There’s over 3,000 clubs in Ireland. Pretty much every parish, which is essentially a village or a town, would have their own GAA club. So it’s basically community based,” says Ciaran O’Flatharta, chair of the Gaelic Sports Club Luxembourg, the grand duchy’s local branch. That sense of community extends when Irish move abroad, reckons O’Flatharta. “We feel quite affiliated with the club and

we look after each other. It’s very home away from home for most of us.” That includes many of the Irish “students [who] come over to do eight month internships in Luxembourg [each year]. A lot of the time it’s their first time away from home. So we welcome them into the club and they play with us during the time they’re here and we look after them a bit as well. Quite a lot of them come back because of the experience they have here. Like, permanently after they finish their studies.” O’Flatharta, who works in finance, “moved to Luxembourg six years ago and

pretty much got involved in playing straight away”. After serving as club treasurer, he was named chairperson in November 2018. There are about 70 active members. While the majority are Irish, all nationalities are welcome to join. They’ve had Americans, Italians, New Zealanders and Spanish, for example. “In fact, our football coach last year was Australian.” And they’re happy to take on novices. “No one’s going to be judged” if they give it a go. The club has teams in four sports: men’s and women’s Gaelic football, hurling (when men play the stick sport which →

is sometimes mistaken for field hockey) and camogie (when women play). The men’s and women’s games are “essentially” alike, with “slightly different rules”, he says. “If you’re an outsider looking in, it’s pretty much the same. You wouldn’t really notice a difference. The GAA is 135 years old and the Luxembourg club got started in 1978. But recently the local chapter formed an umbrella organisation with the lacrosse and ultimate frisbee leagues called the Luxembourg Field Sports Federation. This outfit, in turn, falls under the auspices of the Luxembourg Olympic and Sports Committee (COSL). Being affiliated with COSL has been a boon for the GAA club, which racked up “over 5,000km” on the road last year. “Without them we wouldn’t be able to travel to some tournaments.” And it’s been a great way for newcomers to connect with native residents, “because the vast majority of the lacrosse team are Luxembourgers”. On this year’s agenda: the club’s annual camp for kids aged 4 to 14, held Sundays starting 26 April at Michel Wagner stadium in Weimerskirch; hosting a regional tournament the weekend of 23 May, when they will hopefully beat Brussels, their Benelux division archrival; and a big summer barbeque in July. Like many GAA branches, the Gaelic Sports Club Luxembourg recently appointed a mental health and wellbeing officer. “It’s very important, especially when you live away from home and you can feel a certain isolation sometimes. The whole aim of the club is to be community based,” O’Flatharta says. “Everyone’s far from their families, so it’s really important for us.” × Luxembourg GAA Luxembourg GAA Club

words photo

Aaron Grunwald Mike Zenari

Neel Chrillesen, founder of Vulvastic, shown with her crocheted creations

Crafting empowerment It was her desire to give a “voice to the vulva” that led Neel Chrillesen to begin

crocheting them--first as Christmas ornaments and gifts for friends, now as key chains and charms she is selling through her website, Vulvastic. Neel had also been aware of a Nana campaign, dubbed “Viva la Vulva”, which had sparked outrage in France, deemed by many as inappropriate because of its symbolic images of the female anatomy. “People were getting really worked up, saying it was degrading to women,” Neel told Delano. “It irritates

me that there’s still so much taboo around it.” In no way, she says, should people be offended by a symbolic vulva. “If you’d ask people to draw a penis, [anyone] could do it because you see them everywhere. If you ask them to draw a vulva, not many people can, including women.” As might be expected there have been mixed reactions about her handmade creations: Neel says some don’t want to discuss them at all, but in general “people are quite positive... there’s also the feminist aspect of empowerment.” →

The Journal

“A contract for carriage by air consists of a confirmed single booking for the entire journey.”

The Journal

Consumer rights

Reporting on the community

MARCH/APRIL 2020

↑ European Court of Justice ruling Passengers can seek compensation for cancelled connecting flights where their itinerary started, even when it was scratched in a different jurisdiction.

Ciaran O’Flatharta and the Gaelic Sports Club Luxembourg want you to try Irish sports

Part of the community Most Irish kids have spent at least some time playing in the Gaelic Athletic Association and it’s often their first experience

words photo

Aaron Grunwald Mike Zenari

Neel Chrillesen, founder of Vulvastic, shown with her crocheted creations

Crafting empowerment It was her desire to give a “voice to the vulva” that led Neel Chrillesen to begin

The Journal

“A contract for carriage by air consists of a confirmed single booking for the entire journey.”

In numbers

Facts & figures about Luxembourg

11,451 75,000 ↑

NATURALISATIONS IN 2019

FACE MASKS SENT TO CHINA

The number of foreigners who

Cargolux airlifted

obtained Luxembourg nationality

medical supplies to help combat

dropped slightly from 11,876 in 2018.

coronavirus transmission.

+5.9%

€80

↑

SME PERMIT APPLICATIONS

RISE IN ELECTRICITY BILLS

There were 12,014 small and medium-sized

Luxembourg residents paid 10% more for

business authorisation requests filed in 2019,

power in January 2020 compared to the

compared to 11,342 in 2018.

previous year, or about €80 on an annual basis.

Sources → Justice Ministry → Cargolux → Lex Delles, SME minister → Luxembourg Regulatory Institute

↑

The Journal

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Ultimately, however, Neel hopes the crocheted vulvas will spark dialogue. Recently, her best friend took a few dozen to the Democratic Republic of Congo. “She gave them to two men at a dinner party and filmed their reaction. It was really interesting because they were actually really happy about them, sitting with them the whole evening.” That same friend--who was in Goma, where the UN and other humanitarian organisations are quite active--gave it to others in hopes that the Vulvastic model could be adapted to reflect the various outcomes of female genital mutilation, possibly to be used as teaching tools. More than 200 million females alive today have been cut as a result of the practice, according to the World Health Organization. Sometimes that’s due to customs according to “tradition”, other times in the context of sexual violence during wartime. For Neel, who’s also a life and communication coach at Life Catcher, conversations around such topics are important. She’s also concerned about the rising popularity of labiaplasty, a reconstructive procedure which is sometimes performed to correct functional impairment or discomfort, other times for aesthetics. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 12,666 labiaplasty procedures were carried out in 2016, a 39% spike from the year before. “Women’s magazines are saying you don’t need it, but explain how you can do it, give the costs,” Neel says. “They call it a ‘designer vagina’--which is actually even the wrong word… there are even teenage girls wanting to do that.” As for the design of her creation, Neel doesn’t work from a pattern: she simply crochets two parts--in a wide range of colours and yarns, celebrating diversity--sews them together and adds a bell or bead. “They’re not perfect, because I’m not a crochet wiz. They’re really symbolic, but they’re perfect and unique every time because they’re all different.” ×

Florian Weber says sheep farming has low environmental impact, and the lowest returns of any farming activity

In context

Going on a wander

French-Luxembourg border, 24 January

Vulvastic ↳ www.vulvastic.com

Today, farming contributes less to Luxem-

Customs and environmental protection words

Natalie A. Gerhardstein photo Matic Zorman

agents intercepted 2.5 tonnes of illicit rubbish before it entered the grand duchy.

Photo → AEV

bourg’s GDP than space activities. But its impact on the country’s future is just as important, particularly if you’re a wandering shepherd. Drive from Luxembourg City to Lieler, near Clervaux and, as motorways melt into calm country lanes, if you are lucky, you might encounter Florian Weber and his sheep out wandering. The 32-year-old is Luxembourg’s last wandering shepherd, a role he acquired in 2012 when he and wife Myriam took over a herd of 600 ewes (today, they have 700 ewes and a dozen rams).

Starting the sheep farm consumed vast amounts of time and energy, mostly because shepherding had long since gone out of fashion in Luxembourg. “We were confronted with a lot of questions,” Myriam recalls. Pertinent questions for cattle farmers, like how to dispose of animal waste, were less relevant to the Webers, who had to bound countless administrative hurdles to build a farm. “My father bought the land the farm is on a year before he passed away,” a bearded and soft-voiced Weber recalls. One of

six children, Weber’s parents were street performers in Germany before they moved to Luxembourg in 1984, “to avoid their sons doing military service”. They began a smallholding, which included sheep and sparked Weber’s love of nature. Standing on a hill with breathtaking views of Oesling valleys, today Schäferei Weber is a monument to that passion. When I visit on a frosty February morning, around 30 lambs gambol with their mothers in a barn. For much of the year the herds are → taken wandering, mostly to nature

In numbers

Facts & figures about Luxembourg

11,451 75,000 ↑

NATURALISATIONS IN 2019

FACE MASKS SENT TO CHINA

The number of foreigners who

Cargolux airlifted

obtained Luxembourg nationality

medical supplies to help combat

dropped slightly from 11,876 in 2018.

coronavirus transmission.

+5.9%

€80

↑

SME PERMIT APPLICATIONS

RISE IN ELECTRICITY BILLS

There were 12,014 small and medium-sized

Luxembourg residents paid 10% more for

business authorisation requests filed in 2019,

power in January 2020 compared to the

compared to 11,342 in 2018.

previous year, or about €80 on an annual basis.

Sources → Justice Ministry → Cargolux → Lex Delles, SME minister → Luxembourg Regulatory Institute

↑

The Journal

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Florian Weber says sheep farming has low environmental impact, and the lowest returns of any farming activity

In context

Going on a wander

French-Luxembourg border, 24 January

Vulvastic ↳ www.vulvastic.com

Today, farming contributes less to Luxem-

Customs and environmental protection words

Natalie A. Gerhardstein photo Matic Zorman

agents intercepted 2.5 tonnes of illicit rubbish before it entered the grand duchy.

Photo → AEV

reserves in Luxembourg. Here, they “work” by picking up seeds in their wool, between their hooves and in their digestive tracts and transporting them to isolated areas where they can contribute to the genetic diversity of plant life. Conservation

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Human activity through intensive chemical use in farming and construction has destroyed the conditions some plants need to survive and fragmented the landscape for others, in the worst case leading to extinction. According to the 2005 Luxembourg red list of threatened plants and species, some 8% of vascular plants were regionally extinct and 9.2% critically endangered. These subsequently impact the birds, animals and insects that feed off or rely on these plants to reproduce. The risk is that regional extinctions, if left unchecked, spread to larger areas and ultimately continents. Since the Webers cannot live from the sale of meat and wool alone, they receive biodiversity contracts to work with conservation organisations including Sicona, Natur&ëmwelt and the forestry administration. They plan the wanderings months in advance so that the herd can move from one place to another on foot. The locations can be anywhere in the country and in the past have even included Kirchberg. Working in pairs and with dogs to herd the sheep, once they reach their destination, one of the team will fence off a makeshift field so the sheep can graze for as long as needed. Almost eight years into the project, and the father-of-two is proud of his work. “We work with nature, and we work in nature. And by working, we do something for nature. It’s the complete package,” he says. For Myriam, the most rewarding part of the job has been working with the dogs--they currently have eight border collies, one of which recently had a litter. She also enjoys the public education aspect. “It’s something living that we see, and the sheep explain how it works. […] You have to take people with you and explain and show them,” Myriam explains. “They can be part of the family. The sheep mafia,” she laughs. Check their Facebook page to join the Webers and their sheep on a family wander. × Schaefer Weber ↳ www.schaeferei-weber.lu

words photo

Jess Bauldry Mike Zenari

Licia Zappatore adding the final touches to a birthday cake in her studio

The icing on the cake Licia Zappatore’s steady hand and talent for art restoration led to her training

Colin Firth how to paint for his role as Johannes Vermeer in the film “The Girl with the Pearl Earring”. In fact, most of the painting reproductions in the film were possible thanks to Licia’s technique involving special resurfacing of printouts, which were then glued onto canvas. Licia was well versed in ancient painting, having studied art restoration in Florence, Italy, and the work paid off: the team was nominated for an Oscar for Best Art Direction and Set Decoration. “It was an amazing experience,” says Licia, but she has also delighted in others. Her last restoration project, for instance, was a painting from the 1700s at the Italian embassy in Brussels. It depicted a family, although some of the details

were unknown until her restoration brought them to light. “When I cleaned it, I found a village which had been painted over.” She also discovered not only the name of each boy and girl in the painting, but the family name on a sceptre. “After they saw the name of the family, they uncovered another little painting similar to the [larger one], it was a shock. Restoration is unbelievable because you discover a lot about the painting, what happened to it.” Licia has lived in Luxembourg for 20 years, apart from a 2011-15 stint in Brussels. It was while she was in the Belgian capital that she first began cake decoration, at the request of a friend asking for some help. She enjoyed getting back into three-dimensional work which, she says, → reminded her of her school days:

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Licia’s Cake

words photo

Natalie A. Gerhardstein Mike Zenari

programmed smart house mechanisms that open windows when the temperature reaches a certain threshold. “Some of these things we had thought about, but some are completely new. That’s interesting,” Maquil says. Classroom kits

Valérie Maquil wants kids to plug into coding

The Kniwwelino connection Growing up in Luxembourg, Valérie

aquil’s favourite subject was matheM matics. But she had a reservation--the abstract nature of the subject made it hard to understand its real-world applications. Then, her older brother introduced her to computer science and she never went back. “It was maths, but way more practical. You could see how useful it was,” the researcher explains. Today, Maquil is using her know-how and creativity to help other young people catch the computer science bug--having created Kniwwelino, a simple electronics board with an LED matrix that can be coded remotely by children aged 8 and upwards. It was developed from a Luxembourg Institute for Science and Technology project with the National Research Fund, Bee Creative, the national youth society and the technology education platform Script.

“Really, it’s like a prototype and there’s an online platform where there are blocks, so you can assemble the code like puzzle pieces,” Maquil explains. “The main objective is to get them interested in coding, so they have a positive experience and see it’s not complicated.” Her team presented the kit at science fairs in 2017 to enthusiastic reviews and they went on sale in the Electronic Shop. Kniwwelino has been used in workshops with young people to make wristbands, door signs and decorations, among other things. The versatility of the kit means they can experiment, attaching other LEDs, sensors and cables, for instance. An intern at List used Kniwwelino to make a binary clock with a built-in YouTube counter. As part of a contest, a youngster built a reflex speed game where people had to press the button as quickly as possible when a signal is shown. Others, meanwhile, have

In 2019, Maquil and her team began adapting Kniwwelino for schools and classrooms. “We created classroom kits with blocks and teaching materials.” Again, the response was overwhelm ingly positive, and they tested it in seven schools. “We were looking for pilot schools, but we had the problem that too many schools were interested.” Besides the made-in-Luxembourg aspect of the educational tool, Maquil believes part of Kniwwelino’s attraction lies in its comprehensive training and support package. Teacher feedback suggests that training is highly sought- after, particularly among primary school teachers whose studies may have been less focused on sciences. Maquil said she received little science education when she was in primary school, but things are changing. Over the past ten years, a number of grassroots STEM initiatives have been created in Luxembourg, including code clubs and makerspaces. Starting September 2020, coding will be taught in the final year of Luxembourg primary schools, while computer sciences will be taught from the first year of secondary school. It is perfect timing as List spin-off Succy Lux takes up the baton to bring the Kniwwelino schools kits to market. Thanks to an agreement with the education ministry, these will be made available in Luxembourg schools in the near-future. “When I studied at primary, there was no opportunity to do this. Now, it’s really great to see that things we created allow small children to get interested in computer science.” × ↳ www.kniwwelino.lu

words photo

Jess Bauldry Mike Zenari

Fact file

Useful & random information about Luxembourg

The price of chocolate rose by 12% between January 2000 and January 2010, and by 22% between January 2010 and January 2020. Source: Eurostat

The easternmost point in Luxembourg is on the Sauer river near Rosport. The westernmost point is near Surré. Source: Google Maps/Wikimaps

Ella Gibson broke the women’s record for most points scored in 18m indoor 60-arrow compound archery (596 out of 600 points) during a tournament in Strassen on 22 November 2019. Janine Meissner tied it the next day. Then Sarah Prieels scored 597 points in Italy on 14 December 2019.

Source: Guinness World Records & Worldarchery.org

The Journal

MARCH/APRIL 2020

each project and deadline was different. She was hooked. Upon her return to Luxembourg in 2015, she got serious about decorating cakes, starting Licia’s Cake around the same time. A mother of three boys, Licia enjoys the flexibility the work gives her and does most of the decorating at night. “It’s my time. I don’t have to think about picking up my children or anything. There is a deep level of concentration, it’s complete ecstasy.” A cake tends to take her two days to create: the first to prepare the base of the cake, and she won’t decorate until that’s prepared. “There’s a block in me. I prefer when the base is covered with sugar paste or cream, then it’s like a blank canvas, and I can start my art.” She spends most of the time on the concept, for example, studying in detail the flower or characters she wants to create. Among her favourites are Minions, the yellow characters from “Despicable Me”. “When I make Minions, I smile all the time because of their size, and how they’re looking at me.” In both her art restoration and cake decorating, details are key. “I might lose a lot of time just for a tie or a shoe, but it’s very important for the total design of the cake.” One of the most difficult projects she worked on was a fashion-themed cake for a friend in Italy. Although Licia did some advance prep in Luxembourg, she did the bulk of the work in a house in the mountains, with limited baking supplies. Nevertheless, she managed to create each of the elements, including an edible replica of a Jimmy Choo stiletto. But the hardest part came later, when she transported the tiered cake via cable car and snowmobile to the restaurant. Seeing the pleasure her creations bring others is what Licia loves most. “It makes me so happy. The best is when I ask if the cake went well, and people send me a picture or video of their child getting it. It’s a pleasure I can’t calculate.” Licia’s already taken some pastry classes in B elgium--which she values not just for the new techniques, but also because it gives her “me time”. Next up for her? Learning the art of sculpting with chocolate. ×

Licia’s Cake

words photo

Natalie A. Gerhardstein Mike Zenari

Valérie Maquil wants kids to plug into coding

The Kniwwelino connection Growing up in Luxembourg, Valérie

words photo

Jess Bauldry Mike Zenari

Fact file

Useful & random information about Luxembourg

The price of chocolate rose by 12% between January 2000 and January 2010, and by 22% between January 2010 and January 2020. Source: Eurostat

The easternmost point in Luxembourg is on the Sauer river near Rosport. The westernmost point is near Surré. Source: Google Maps/Wikimaps

Source: Guinness World Records & Worldarchery.org

The Journal

MARCH/APRIL 2020

In my suitcase

← Aloe plant Her mum forced her to use aloe vera gel when she was 17, but now she’s a fan. “I’ve always had” aloe plants wherever she’s lived.

Expats share what they brought when they moved to Luxembourg English

words

photos

The Journal

Aaron Grunwald Mike Zenari

↙ First trombone While she switched to euphonium at the orchestra nearly two years ago, her first instrument was trombone. “My mum bought it when I was 11.” She had upgraded since then, but this one “still works”. In fact, she played it during Mamer’s Hämmelsmarch (village parade) last summer.

→ Necklace She received this necklace on her wedding day from Claus and “I wear it every day”.

→ Pocket mirror A piano teacher who became a good family friend gave her this pocket mirror when Ganouni-Jensen was 14. “She was 82 at the time. The year after, she passed away.”

↑ Favourite spoon She’s loved this spoon, from her family’s ordinary service, since she was 5. She still eats soup with it.

← St Nicholas This St Nicholas decorative figure was “handmade by an American lady” in Saudi Arabia 20 years ago. “He comes out every year for Kleeschen.” Claus put on the Danish flags last year.

→ Rugby trophy “I wasn’t very sporty,” but while in Saudi Arabia, she joined a ladies 7s rugby team and “it was fantastic”. It’s also how she met Claus, a marathon runner who attended a rugby night.

ELAINE GANOUNIJENSEN “On our way to Portland [in the US state of Oregon], we stopped in Bertrange.” That was in 1999 and “we still haven’t gotten to Portland”. These days, Elaine Ganouni-Jensen lives in Mamer commune, with her husband, Claus, who’s Danish, and their two teenage daughters. “This is my home now.” GanouniJensen trained as a nurse, but now practises as a foot health professional. She also performs euphonium with the Harmonie Gemeng Mamer orchestra, sits on Mamer’s integration committee and (unsuccessfully) stood for the local council twice. “My Luxembourgish is rubbish,” she says self-deprecatingly, but even just a bit “opens doors”. Born and raised in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, to a Slovenian mother and Tunisian father, GanouniJensen decided to become a nurse (like her mum) at the age of 17. After studying and working in Sheffield, with a three-month internship in Kolkata in-between, she worked for two and a half years as a cardiac nurse in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which is where she met Claus.

← Nurse’s badge Elaine Ganouni-Jensen received this badge after completing nursing training at the University of Sheffield. “Without that, I wouldn’t be here today. I wouldn’t have gone anywhere,” she says. “I wouldn’t have been able to get on the plane to Saudi.”

→

WHAT I REGRET LEAVING BEHIND

Illustration → Hadi Saadaldeen/Maison Moderne

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Badges of honour

↑ Framed pictures Claus “asked me to marry him” in Saudi Arabia, but left the country 3 months before GanouniJensen moved. These pictures, taken in front of his home in Riyadh and during a trip to Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, were what she had to remember him by.

My sister Tanya “I regret leaving my family behind,” says Elaine Ganouni-Jensen. “I missed my mum and still do miss my sister Tanya terribly. We have always been very close, more so since mum passed away. We talk most days, even now.” She adds: “When I left Saudi Arabia and came to Luxembourg, I ironically missed the mosques calling prayer time 5 times a day. It annoyed me immensely when I moved there!”

In my suitcase

← Aloe plant Her mum forced her to use aloe vera gel when she was 17, but now she’s a fan. “I’ve always had” aloe plants wherever she’s lived.

Expats share what they brought when they moved to Luxembourg English

words

photos

The Journal

Aaron Grunwald Mike Zenari

→ Necklace She received this necklace on her wedding day from Claus and “I wear it every day”.

→ Pocket mirror A piano teacher who became a good family friend gave her this pocket mirror when Ganouni-Jensen was 14. “She was 82 at the time. The year after, she passed away.”

↑ Favourite spoon She’s loved this spoon, from her family’s ordinary service, since she was 5. She still eats soup with it.

→

WHAT I REGRET LEAVING BEHIND

Illustration → Hadi Saadaldeen/Maison Moderne

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Badges of honour

Community Spotlight

←

LAMA ALOGLI

Meet the people who add zest to life in Luxembourg

A brighter future MARCH/APRIL 2020

piano lessons, learned French and was a scout. It was while MCing for a scout talent show that Habra tried out his first jokes, before going on to perform in local bars in 2008. Outside of the comedy context, Habra was also on Syrian TV, as a talking head on a show about hackers. The exposure earned him the unexpected attention of his uncles who, after seeing the show, dropped off their laptops at Habra’s home uninvited for a free security check. “They didn’t know what I studied until I went on TV. Really?” he laughs. Five years on, Habra’s life is more stable. He now has a daughter, in his free time he enjoys eating out with friends and he is learning Luxembourgish for the passport. But there are still moments he forgets where he is. “One day, I woke up from a nap [in Luxembourg] and I thought I must iron my shirts! […] It was lian Habra likes to see the funny side

of things. A cybersecurity expert by day, by night he can often be found doing standup comedy in Luxembourg City. The opening gambit of his set, “I come from Syria, I didn’t have a choice. I’m not sure about you,” is always met with nervous laughter. You can almost hear the audience ask themselves, “is it OK to laugh at the plight of refugees?”. For Habra, this kind of humour is empowering. “When I make this joke, I’m not saying that we [Syrians] are not good. I’m saying we’re funny, we talk about it and we fix it,” he tells me over lunch. Habra came to Luxembourg from Damascus in 2015 by plane to start a new job and join his wife, who was living in Germany at the time. The easygoing telecommunications graduate had worked two jobs back in

Damascus: teaching English and working at a bank. While the work in Luxembourg gave him more financial security, he said he struggled to find common ground with his new colleagues. Besides the missed cultural references like movies that never made it to Syria, he received questions that suggested a lack of empathy. “An interesting question I received from my Luxembourgish teacher, which shocked me, was when we talked about recycling. She asked ‘do you sort or recycle in Syria?’”. Habra explained that there had been a recycling project but after war broke out in 2011 other priorities took over, like finding fuel and food. Before then, however, Habra’s childhood sounds in many ways similar to that → of a Luxembourger. As a boy, he took

WHERE TO MEET/ HEAR SYRIANS

↑

ELIAN HABRA

There are around 2,000 Syrians registered as living in Luxembourg and many more who have already acquired Luxembourg nationality.

The comedian is pictured next to the reconstructed Palmyra arch at neimënster. The original Arch of Septimius Severus in Homs was destroyed by Isis in 2015.

“SALAM SHOW” ON RADIO ARA Tune into 102.9 or 105.2 FM Mondays from 2-3 p.m. or Tuesdays from 10-11 p.m.

words

photos

Jess Bauldry Mike Zenari

SHOWCASE CHICHE! From pop-up to permanent fixture, Chiche! was founded by a Syrian chef and serves Syrian and Lebanese mezze, made by refugees. 20 avenue Pasteur, Luxembourg-Limpertsberg Chiche Luxembourg

Or listen to the podcasts online ↳ www.salam-ara.com

Photo → Shutterstock

a habit in Damascus to wake up [in the night] and iron clothes for the next day because the electricity would go down.” Habra doesn’t miss the power outages, but he does miss the familiarity of Syria and his parents, with whom he speaks twice daily on Skype. He says that Syria has changed in the past five years--the high cost of fuel has given rise to a new cycling movement. It’s also more common to see joggers in the street. “In 10 to 15 years’ time, all of these Syrians who moved to Germany, the US, Canada will bring the values they learned from Europe to their homeland. I believe Syria will have a brighter future,” he says. A brighter future is something that Lama Alogli was striving for when she created the “Salam Show” on Radio Ara in 2016. Alogli arrived in Luxembourg from Syria in 2013 to study a master’s in

LANGUAGE TANDEM Why not try to learn Arabic and meet a Syrian at the same time by participating in a language tandem? Tandem Luxembourg

SYRIOUSLY! Syrian cuisine in Beggen. 207 rue de Beggen ↳ www.syriouslyrestaurant.com

The ancient city of Damascus is one of the oldest, continually inhabited cities in the Middle East. Founded in 3000 BC, it was home to a flourishing craft industry in the Middle Ages, specialised in swords and lace. Today, it is one of six world heritage sites in the country on the list of World Heritage in danger. ↳ www.unesco.org

The Journal

The radio presenter came to Luxembourg to study a master’s in economics. She has since founded a radio show in Arabic, French and English.

Syrians

economics and finance. The transition was challenging. Like Habra, she faced questions. “I met some students who asked ‘do you have university in Syria? Do you have theatre and cinema?’ Oh my God!” As exasperating as it was, Alogli remained patient and, “when the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis happened, I decided to help”. Having herself experienced and overcome the language barriers, she set out to create an Arabic-language radio programme that would help others. “I decided to provide information. I thought radio was the best way because then you can hear it at home, at work, in the street,” she said. In addition to interviews and features, each show has a five-minute news segment in Arabic. Alogli also writes up breaking news on the show’s Facebook page. But that is not all. Part of the show explaining the key things to know about her country and culture is conducted in English and French. “I believe that integration should be from both sides. […] That’s why I decided to speak about our country, culture and history so the European people can have something to discuss with refugees.” The project has been well received, and this year Alogli, who now has dual Syrian-Luxembourg nationality, will extend the show. “My plan is to integrate more people from the Farsi-speaking community and different refugee communities, who really need this information.” ×

Community Spotlight

←

LAMA ALOGLI

Meet the people who add zest to life in Luxembourg

A brighter future MARCH/APRIL 2020

WHERE TO MEET/ HEAR SYRIANS

↑

ELIAN HABRA

There are around 2,000 Syrians registered as living in Luxembourg and many more who have already acquired Luxembourg nationality.

The comedian is pictured next to the reconstructed Palmyra arch at neimënster. The original Arch of Septimius Severus in Homs was destroyed by Isis in 2015.

“SALAM SHOW” ON RADIO ARA Tune into 102.9 or 105.2 FM Mondays from 2-3 p.m. or Tuesdays from 10-11 p.m.

words

photos

Jess Bauldry Mike Zenari

Or listen to the podcasts online ↳ www.salam-ara.com

Photo → Shutterstock

LANGUAGE TANDEM Why not try to learn Arabic and meet a Syrian at the same time by participating in a language tandem? Tandem Luxembourg

SYRIOUSLY! Syrian cuisine in Beggen. 207 rue de Beggen ↳ www.syriouslyrestaurant.com

The Journal

The radio presenter came to Luxembourg to study a master’s in economics. She has since founded a radio show in Arabic, French and English.

Syrians

Snapshots

Highlights from the international community and networking events

Fayot debut at Amcham

In his first formal opportunity MARCH/APRIL 2020

addressing the business community since becoming Luxembourg’s economy minister, Franz Fayot (LSAP) shared his views on space and innovation, and strategies on achieving sustainable economy,

with the American Chamber of Commerce, 24 February. ↳ www.amcham.lu

photos 5

LaLa La Photo Amcham’s Paul Schonenberg Sobolewa Sistema, Gabriele Herbsthofer, Roel Schrijen and Virginie Odin 3 Emmanuelle de Foy and Dagmar Bycankova 4 Simône van Schouwenburg and Nasir Zubairi 5 Franz Fayot 6 Catalina Gaviria and Renata Ubaviciute 7 Lewszyk Roman and Frank Müller 1

Find more events Check Delano’s digital agenda for the latest happenings: ↳ www.delano.lu/agenda

F R I DAY

15 M AY

AGENDA 08:15 Reception 08:30 Keynote speech 09:15 Breakfast

Talent attraction

VENUE Sofitel Le Grand Ducal (40 boulevard d’Avranches L-1160 Luxembourg)

Delano Breakfast Talk is the rendezvous of early morning English speakers. Every time an expert shares his knowledge Delano magazine is pleased to invite you to the first of a finance, innovation Delano Breakfast Talk of 2019, whichor willstrategy take place attopic during a Sofitel Luxembourg Europe. Nicolas Mackel, speaker 15-minute speech, followed keynote by a 5-minute Q&A session. from Luxembourg for Finance, will give his vision about how to search, attract and import talents to Luxembourg.

ORGANISED BY

↓ Nicolas Mackel

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CEO Luxembourg for finance

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05/03/2020 18:10

Lenert luncheon

On just the second day in her new

Guy de Muyser Jean-Luc Schaus and Mathilde Brasseur 3 Sandro Pace-Bonello, Denise Clarke, Sarah Battey and Arjan Kirthi Singha 4 Paulette Lenert 1

role, Luxembourg’s health minister Paulette Lenert (LSAP) joined the British Chamber of Commerce for its first luncheon of 2020, MARCH/APRIL 2020

6 February.

↳ www.bcc.lu

photos

LaLa La Photo

LPEA marks 1st decade The Luxembourg Private Equity and Venture Capital Association celebrated its 10th anniversary, 11 February. ↳ www.lpea.lu

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Pierre Gramegna, the finance minister (DP) 2 Luis Galveias, Rajaa Mekouar-Schneider, Nicolas Mackel and Stéphane Pesch 3 Claus Mansfeldt, chair of the LPEA, Jhemp Bastin, a Luxembourg artist, and Hans-Jürgen Schmitz, LPEA committee member 4 Tom Théobald 1

Romain Gamba/Maison Moderne

Chengdu in Lux

Everest comes to Lux

Hundreds gathered for a Chinese

to create a memorable forty-second bazaar for the NGO

new year gala at Casino 2000

Aide à l’Enfance de l’Inde et du Népal, 9 February.

to bring in the year of the rat,

↳ www.aein.lu

Lively music, a visit from the prime minister and a virtual ascent of Mount Everest (by treadmill) all combined

20 January. ↳ www.clccl.lu

MARCH/APRIL 2020

photos

Lex Delles, tourism minister (DP) 2 Diane Mangen, Claude Schlesser and Nicole Meisch 3 Willi Kaufhold and Christian Streil 4 Performers from the Chengdu School of Culture and Arts 1

LaLa La Photo

1 Liliane Ries, Françoise Binsfeld, Lok Bahadur and Jean-Marie on the treadmill 2 Sheetal Pfeiffer, Elma Dharini Pires Pfeiffer and Susi Estgen 3 Namu Thapa, Chudamani K.C. and Gita K.C.

photos

Wassailing event

Around 100 people took part in a bonfire-lit orchard ceremony to help usher in a good harvest organised by the local cider producer Ramborn, 12 January. ↳ www.ramborn.com 1

1 Adie Kaye giving the wassail toast 2 A taste of mulled cider in the orchard 2 Cellist André Mergenthaler

photos

Mike Zenari

LaLa La Photo

www.wengler.lu

Marcom fête

Around 800 people attended this year’s Media Awards, which honours the country’s best adverts, organised by Maison Moderne (Delano’s publisher) and RTL, 5 February. ↳ www.media-awards.lu

MARCH/APRIL 2020 Happy winners Nathalie Reuter (MC) and Hugues Delcourt (jury president) 3 Marie-Adélaïde Leclercq, Nicolas Henckes and Elfy Pins 1

photos

Jan Hanrion & Patricia Pitsch/ Maison Moderne

Economic forecast attendees heard at the third economic outlook roundtable

Emotional Brexit vigil

organised by Statec and Oxford Economics, 21 January.

More than 100 people attended

↳ www.statec.lu

a vigil at the St. Alphonse church to

The outlook for the eurozone economy remains mixed,

mark the official exit of the UK from the EU, 31 January. 1 2

MEP Marc Angel (LSAP) British ambassador John Marshall addressed the vigil and acknowledged that “for many people this moment is not a happy one” 3 David Pike led a recital 1

photos 3 1 Oliver Rakau of Oxford Economics, Bastien Larue of Statec, Delano’s Aaron Grunwald (who served as moderator) and Ferdy Adam of Statec 2 Oliver Rakau 3 An audience member asks about Italian financial risks

photos

Matic Zorman/ Maison Moderne

Matic Zorman/Maison Moderne

The international community meets for real conversation

T U E S DAY

12 M AY

AGENDA 6:30 p.m. Welcome & Bar service 7:00 p.m. Delano interviews 7:30 p.m. Bar service & DJ set 8:00 p.m. End of the bar service

VENUE Knokke Out 15 rives de Clausen, Luxembourg

PARKING Brasserie - Rives de Clausen

INTERVIEWS

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Take the opportunity to see live content. 20 minutes of onstage interviews in English.

Discover the new print magazine a day before its official release.

Enjoy a fun and friendly evening. Bar service with quality guests. Be sure not to miss it!

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Cover story

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Recent reports on in-work poverty and the

COP WIT ING CRU H THE NCH

risk of poverty have placed the grand duchy in a poor light. There is no doubt that more and more people living in Luxembourg, including many “expat” residents, are experiencing what can be termed “economic insecurity”. But do the bare statistics tell the whole story?

words

Natalie A. Gerhardstein and Duncan Roberts

illustrations

Angus Greig and Maison Moderne

Cover story

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Recent reports on in-work poverty and the

COP WIT ING CRU H THE NCH

words

Natalie A. Gerhardstein and Duncan Roberts

illustrations

Angus Greig and Maison Moderne

*Name changed at the request of interviewee

Employment is not immunity

Statec also concluded that the working poor have an elevated risk of slipping into poverty compared to residents on unemployment benefits. “Having a job might not make someone fully immune against poverty, as 13.4% of people in employment are at risk of poverty,” its authors wrote. That places the grand duchy in a rather

↑ Single-parent families are the most vulnerable to the risk of poverty, according to a report published by national statistics office Statec last October

Housing as an amplifier

In its country report on Luxembourg published on 26 February this year, the European Commission concluded that “the housing sector is an amplifier of inequalities” in the grand duchy. Citing 2017 figures, the report said housing costs “represent an important burden for the most disadvantaged”. The share of housing expenditures in disposable income of the 20% most disadvantaged households was 42%, which is three times greater than that of the 20% of the wealthiest households, which spent just 14.5% of disposable income on housing. A Caritas Cares country report on Luxembourg published in September 2019 also raises issues about housing and the link to increased poverty risk. “Luxembourg has a serious lack of affordable housing and social housing,” it noted. The authorities were made acutely aware of that shortage in October 2019 when scores of applicants for new affordable housing apartments being built in Alzingen camped out overnight at the headquarters of the Société Nationale des Habitations à Bon Marché, just so they could be among the first in line. But the disproportionate rise in housing prices in general also poses a problem. “This leads to overcrowding, as well as poor and inadequate housing conditions,” the Caritas Cares authors wrote. And Luxembourg is not the only wealthy EU country where this is happening. In an article commenting on the shock Irish election results in The Guardian on 16 February, Fintan O’Toole noted that employment has risen for 29 consecutive quarters, and real disposable incomes in Dublin had by 13% since the Irish economy started to recover in 2013. The Irish economy is overflowing again, “this time on a wave of outside investment,” O’Toole wrote. “Which sounds great--except that house prices have risen by 62%, → pushing rents up with them.”

Cover story

MARCH/APRIL 2020

or the past few years, Sarah*, an American now in her early 50s, has sent out her CV to apply for various office jobs in Luxembourg. But she has struggled to find a suitable position, despite previously being at director-level in communications in the United States. Already stretched thin, Sarah also went through a divorce last year. It completely shifted her financial situation. From a purely statistical point of view, she probably does not count among Luxembourg’s growing number of in-work poor, but as a single parent, Sarah is in the group most vulnerable to falling into poverty, according to a report published by national statistics office Statec last October. That report, examining the relationship between work and social cohesion in the grand duchy, was released in advance of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. It revealed that Luxembourg’s overall risk of poverty rate stood at 18.3%. “Single- parent families are very vulnerable, followed by families with more than two children and single people,” the report stated. The statistics agency estimated that the poverty line, which is calculated according to EU guidelines at “60% of the national median equivalised disposable income after social transfers”, for a single adult with one child is €2,617. However, the income required for that household to enjoy what is defined as a “decent standard of living” is €2,842. For a single adult without children in the grand duchy, the poverty line is a monthly income of €2,013 and the baseline income is €2,110. For a couple with two children, Statec calculated the minimum monthly income required for a decent standard of living as €4,213, even though the poverty line is just slightly higher, at €4,227.

embarrassing second place in the EU27 league table, behind only Romania (15.3%), and well above the EU average of 9.5%. Sarah, who moved with her children and husband to Luxembourg in 2015, had already left the office environment while she was still living in the US. “My children were special needs kids and had an autoimmune disorder that made me stay home to be there for them when there were problems,” she told Delano in a recent interview. “We decided to try Europe because I knew it would be much better because of better food, the family dynamic, stress levels. In America, you have to work so hard and such long hours, and it was so stressful.” Although she had managed her own businesses prior to the move, her husband was the main breadwinner in Luxembourg. But Sarah isn’t one to rest on her laurels. “From a young age, I always worked my ass off.” She immediately enrolled in French courses. Got involved in volunteer work. Took on freelance writing, English tutoring, apartment management, renovations and other gigs. She also completed her training in emotional freedom techniques, a field of therapy she would like to continue, although she’s realistic about the difficulty of such work. “It’s hard to get clients, as people put their mental health on the back burner.” To make matters more difficult, the timing of the divorce coincided around the same time as her oldest child was to attend university. Last spring, Sarah took more steady independent work in relocation services, which in total gave her a gross monthly salary of around €2,200 (pre-taxes and contributions)--not enough for living expenses by any means, but the work was flexible enough that she could still devote the necessary time to her children. Sarah’s rent alone is €2,600, although she admits that’s a good deal for what she is getting in central Luxembourg. But it underlines one conclusion of the 2019 Statec report, which showed that fixed expenses that cannot be reduced “account for 36% of a monthly budget and increases the risk of household poverty”.

*Name changed at the request of interviewee

Employment is not immunity

↑ Single-parent families are the most vulnerable to the risk of poverty, according to a report published by national statistics office Statec last October

Housing as an amplifier

Cover story

MARCH/APRIL 2020

A Eurobarometer survey conducted in November 2019 showed that 71% of Luxembourg EU residents (among them 59% Luxembourg nationals) listed housing as one of the most important problems facing the country--compare that to the EU28 average for the same category, just 12%.

are materially deprived in Luxembourg.” ↓

Conchita D’Ambrosio Professor of economics, University of Luxembourg

Vulnerable and under-represented persons

Luca Ratti Associate professor, European and comparative labour law, University of Luxembourg

Impacting the next generation

D’Ambrosio says research has also been done on the effect of mothers who said they faced major financial problems during the first 14 weeks of their pregnancy, and the consequences this may have on the baby’s weight and head circumference at birth. “And we see mothers with this type of problem have smaller kids, both in terms of birth weight and head circumference.” The researchers also studied the consequences of this subjective feeling on the children later, in terms of school performances or mental health, for example. “We see that income is as important as the feeling of having major financial problems for educational outcomes. But when it comes to the mental health of the children, what matters is the number of major financial problems the mothers feel they have, not so much income. This is to say the potential worries of the mothers, they transmit to the children. And if this is the case, we are a generation that worries, we are transmitting this to the next generation. The → next generation will be worse off.”

Photo → University of Luxembourg

few people that

Pan-European project

Photo → University of Luxembourg

MARCH/APRIL 2020

“ There are very

Cover story

Anxiety over the future

Sarah is considering what to do next to relieve the burden on her household budget. She prefers the convenience of where she currently lives, near the city centre, but she is not alone among Luxembourg’s single parents who are taking in a roommate to help with the rent. “There’s no reason to leave where I’m at because that rental price is really good, for a 4-bedroom house with a backyard,” she said. “There’s no way you can get a 3-bedroom for that price nowadays.” But rent is, of course, only a portion of her expenses. Adding in utilities, internet, phone, groceries, petrol and normal incidentals brings her average monthly outlays to around €3,700. That doesn’t include things like life, car or house insurance, car repairs and orthodontics, which add another €190 per month, all of which can just compound the worry. If, as O’Toole suggests, the Irish young and old were voting out of concerns about their own economic future, they would not be the first to do so. Conchita D’Ambrosio, a professor of economics at the University of Luxembourg, says that economic insecurity--a term she prefers--can be used to explain voting behaviour. “The thing that drives behaviour of people is how they feel,” she says. “You see that in many countries, many people are becoming more right-wing, which has been associated by political science with the need for economic security.” D’Ambrosio, whose research mainly focuses on income and wealth distributions, deprivation, polarisation and social exclusion, says that “we define economic insecurity as the anxiety that you have today that you will be hit by any kind of economic shock in the future, and you will not be able to recover”. What’s more, economic insecurity can have a long-lasting impact, and can even be transmitted to future generations. A study referenced by D’Ambrosio took a look at data from the UK, which began with interviews of some 14,000 pregnant women at the beginning of the 1990s in which they were asked if they had a major financial problem. “It’s a subjective question, because you can be middle class, rich, but still you may feel that you had a major financial problem,” D’Ambrosio explains. The researchers in the UK have continued to follow the lives of the women, and even conducted interviews with the children, some of whom are by now starting their own families.

The University of Luxembourg is one of eight universities working on the pan-European “Working, Yet Poor” (WorkYP) project, which receives funding through the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme. Labour lawyer Luca Ratti is the WorkYP project coordinator and explains that the researchers soon realised that policy-makers had been tackling the problem of in-work poverty horizontally. “So, the first thing we wanted to do was to change this attitude, to tackle this sort of inequality in the labour markets vertically.” They isolated four groups of people that are mostly affected by in-work poverty. The first is “subordinate employees”, that is the low wage and low skilled. Then there are the self-employed, particularly solo self-employed who predominantly have just one client. So-called precarious workers make up the third group. This comprises temporary agency workers, fixed-term workers and involuntary parttimers--the latter being mostly women. And finally, there are the casual, intermittent, zero hours and gig economy workers. “A very topical subject right now that includes crowd workers, riders that deliver food, Uber drivers and so on,” says Ratti. “We invented this acronym, VUP, which means ‘vulnerable and under-represented persons’,” Ratti explains. “We are going to start studying from the definition of VUP groups and try to find out the reasons they are in the situation; why they are more at risk of in-work poverty than others.” One of the assumptions behind the entire project is that in-work poverty is a very complex phenomenon. “And because the problem is complex, we shouldn’t try to find an easy answer,” says Ratti. “Every time I am asked, what’s your solution, well come on, we shouldn’t say ‘let’s increase the minimum wage’.

This does not work at all. It is really the bad approach to in-work poverty.” As a labour lawyer, Ratti says he is supposed to be able to find out whether legislation has created vulnerabilities. So, for example, whether the law on fixed-term contracts has increased or not the precarity of employment relationships. “So, I might be able to put in place a better legal framework, or to suggest something new to policy-makers. That’s just one part of the story.” Then there’s social security and social assistance measures devoted to people in need and below the poverty line, and housing policies. “So, there’s a number of measures that can be taken by the member states, and even by the EU as a whole, and the evaluation of such measures will be one of the objectives of our project.” One of the things Ratti says is missing in the grand duchy is a constitutional provision about decent standard of living. “There’s no article in our constitution here that says workers have the right to get a decent salary.” Many other countries, and even some supranational instruments, do just that. The European Pillar of Social Rights, for example, says that “adequate minimum wages shall be ensured, in a way that provides for the satisfaction of the needs of the worker and his/her family in the light of national economic and social conditions”. Ratti likes the way his native Italy expresses this in its constitution. “The beautiful way to rephrase it is article 36 of the Italian Constitution, which has this beautiful combination between two factors: the salary must be proportionate to the quantity and quality of the work you do, plus in any event sufficient to grant the worker and family a decent standard of living. That must be the criteria, the threshold,” Ratti argues. ↳ www.uni.lu

are materially deprived in Luxembourg.” ↓

Conchita D’Ambrosio Professor of economics, University of Luxembourg

Vulnerable and under-represented persons

Luca Ratti Associate professor, European and comparative labour law, University of Luxembourg

Impacting the next generation

Photo → University of Luxembourg

few people that

Pan-European project

Photo → University of Luxembourg

MARCH/APRIL 2020

“ There are very

Cover story

Anxiety over the future

Equally importantly, D’Ambrosio questions the statistics that place Luxembourg so high in the rankings of in-work poor, for example. “Because Luxembourg has a lot of rich people, it has a very high median, the poverty line... is very high. I agree there are a lot of poor people, poor workers in Luxembourg. But... probably we measure poverty in a way that is difficult to compare with other countries.”

Cover story

Material deprivation

At risk of poverty and severe material deprivation While Luxembourg performs below the EU average in terms of overall and in-work risk of poverty, it is the best country to live in to avoid material deprivation. At risk of poverty In-work at risk of poverty Severe material deprivation rate (% of population in 2018) EU27 Luxembourg Sweden Netherlands Cz.Republic Finland

Public services The grand duchy has a host of schemes that are designed to help out those in need and who have a low income. Here we list a selection of the public services available.

↑

COST-OF-LIVING BENEFIT Forms are available from Guichet.lu, local communes or the National Solidarity Fund. They must be completed by 30 September of the year for which an application is being made. Income parameters change depending on household. ↳ www.guichet.lu (search for “cost-of-living benefit”) ↳ www.fns.lu (in French)

Fixed-term contracts

Denmark Estonia UK France Poland Belgium Ireland Spain Slovakia Italy Croatia Greece Romania Bulgaria 0

But it is not just single parents facing the squeeze. Often young single professionals arriving in Luxembourg also struggle to make ends meet when faced with the grand duchy’s disproportionately high rental costs. Jennifer*, who moved to Luxembourg from the UK to work in financial services, says the only place she could afford to live in the grand duchy when she arrived was a house share with ten people. “I could have gone to prison for murder if I hadn’t moved out,” she says of the conditions in the house and the behaviour of some flatmates in particular. “The first January the temperature dropped to -5°C and there was no heating at one stage. There was mould on the walls, the electricity would go off if you switched on the toaster. A lot of people I know in Luxembourg had similar experiences when they first arrived. Absolutely horrific.” The accountant assistant wanted to save a fixed amount of her monthly salary, with the hope of one day buying her own property. But after looking at alternative living arrangements in Luxembourg, she ended up moving to Arlon and suffering the trials of a daily commute that often took up to 90 minutes and more. “Ideally I would live on the outskirts of the city and have a car,” Jennifer says. “But I just can’t afford that until I get a few years’ experience.” At least Jennifer has a permanent contract. There is a growing number of employees who do not have even that luxury, which →

SOCIAL INCLUSION INCOME Eligibility for the “revenu d’inclusion sociale” (Revis) requires applicants be at least 25 years old and to be receiving an income, either personally or collectively with their household, which falls below the thresholds set by law. They must also remain registered as a job seeker with the National Employment Agency (Adem) and “be prepared to exhaust all options, in Luxembourg or abroad, to improve their situation”. ↳ www.guichet.lu (search for “social inclusion income”) *Name changed at the request of interviewee

Germany

Source → Eurostat

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Indeed, judging by another indicator, severe material deprivation, the grand duchy is top of the class. This refers to the enforced inability to pay unexpected expenses, or to afford a one-week annual holiday away from home, a meal involving meat, chicken or fish every second day, adequate heating and some durable goods such as a washing machine, colour television, telephone or car, or being confronted with payment arrears. “There are a lot of working poor [in Luxembourg], but very few of them are materially deprived,” says D’Ambrosio. According to Eurostat data from 2018, just 1.3% of Luxembourg’s population suffers from severe material deprivation. That is well below the EU27 average of 6.1% and compares favourably with neighbours Belgium (4.9%), France (4.7%) and Germany (3.1%). “If you look at material deprivation, Luxembourg is the best country you can live in. There are very few people that are materially deprived in Luxembourg. Compared to the other Europeans, people in Luxembourg can afford much more... but they are [classified as] poor because there is this [high] national poverty line.” Sarah considers that she budgets very well, rarely buying new clothes, opting instead for secondhand. She’s driving an old car, but doesn’t mind so long as it gets her between two places. But three strains in particular are causing her extra stress. First, she independently pays into her own pension, social security and taxes. Second, she receives alimony which both puts her in a higher tax bracket, but also causes her to pay taxes which she says work out roughly to €900 per month. And third, her situation will also change significantly when her eldest attends university this autumn: not only will she help pay that expense, but she’ll simultaneously receive less child support. None of this even factors in additional independent business expenses (€145 per month), or retirement backpay (€25,000 over two years, soon paid off).

RENT SUBSIDY A ministry of housing initiative intended to help low-income families to rent decent accommodation. It is applicable to those paying rent that exceeds 25% of their net disposable income (excluding other social benefits). The monthly benefit is currently capped at €300. ↳ www.guichet.lu (search for “rent subsidy”)

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FOOD BANKS ↑

AFFORDABLE HOUSING The Société Nationale des Habitations à Bon Marché is the state’s subsidised housing scheme that allows single people and families to buy property on a 99-year lease if they meet certain criteria. Examples of pre-tax income ceilings are €81,600 for a single person and €132,650 for a couple with two children. ↳ www.snhbm.lu (in French)

SOCIAL HOUSING People with low income who are having difficulties obtaining housing may be able to rent a dwelling through the Social Housing Agency (AIS) if they meet certain criteria. It is made available for a maximum period of 3 years. ↳ www.guichet.lu (search for “social housing”) ↳ www.logement.public.lu (in French)

CAPITAL CITY HOUSING The City of Luxembourg operates several schemes to assist residents with housing. Its “Baulücken” programme sees the City work with real estate developers to sell various plots of land as emphyteutic leaseholds. The City selects future purchasers based on specific criteria and housing units are then offered for sale. ↳ www.vdl.lu

The Cent Buttek organisation operates 3 “social supermarkets” that work on the same principle as food banks in Beggen, Bettembourg and Lamadelaine. Another facility operates under the auspices of the City of Luxembourg in the capital’s Gare district. They are supplied with unsold or unsellable food items (that are in perfect condition) by local bakeries and supermarkets and stores. Because they are run mainly by volunteers, the stores are open at restricted times. The social supermarkets are accessible to holders of a membership card supplied by the “office social” at local communes to eligible households. ↳ www.centbuttek.lu (in French)

CHILDCARE SERVICE VOUCHERS Assistance with covering costs of childcare services, the so-called “chèques-services accueil”, can be applied for at local communes. The state’s contribution is limited to 60 hours per week for children aged up to 12. To receive the benefit, contracts have to be renewed every 12 months. ↳ www.guichet.lu (search for “childcare service vouchers”) ↳ www.cae.public.lu (in French or German)

Cover story

Material deprivation

Public services The grand duchy has a host of schemes that are designed to help out those in need and who have a low income. Here we list a selection of the public services available.

↑

Fixed-term contracts

Denmark Estonia UK France Poland Belgium Ireland Spain Slovakia Italy Croatia Greece Romania Bulgaria 0

Germany

Source → Eurostat

MARCH/APRIL 2020

↑

FOOD BANKS ↑

The poverty line

makes access to housing and other services even more precarious. Figures revealed by employment minister Dan Kersch (LSAP) in December show that, between 2009 and 2019, the percentage of fixed-term contracts being signed by employees rose from 3.7% to 5.6%. And many of these are for less than 12 months, which can only add to economic insecurity among those employees who find themselves faced with uncertainty as their contract comes to an end.

This chart shows there is a discrepancy between the official poverty line and what is considered enough income to enjoy a “decent standard of living”. Decent standard of living

€5,000 €4,000

Source → Statec-EU-SILC

€3,000

€2,000

€1,000

0 Single adult

Couple no children

Couple 2 children

Adult 1 child

Luxembourg timeline While Luxembourg’s rate of in-work risk of poverty has risen over 5 years, its rate of children at risk of poverty or social exclusion has fallen. At risk of poverty (% of population) In-work at risk of poverty (% of employed) Children at risk of poverty or social exclusion (%, 0-17 years)

0 2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

Source → Eurostat, OECD

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Social measures

Poverty line

Kersch expressed concern over these numbers, saying that “permanent contracts should remain the norm, and fixed-term contracts the exception”. Indeed, there are legislative previsions that stipulate that fixed-term contracts can only be drawn up in specific cases. And the government, and its predecessor, has introduced social measures that it claims helps tackle poverty, including 20 hours of free childcare for pre-schoolers, free school books, rent subsidies for those struggling on low incomes, and a cost-of-living allowance for the most vulnerable households. Even the much-heralded introduction of free public transport on 29 February this year was, according to minister François Bausch (Green party), a social measure--a study shows that households in the grand duchy who use public transport as their only means of transport will save on average €390 per year. At a European level, Luxembourg’s EU commissioner for jobs and social rights Nicolas Schmit (LSAP) is keen to take on the controversial policy of a minimum wage for Europe, with a view to fighting poverty. “There are 100 million people living in poverty in Europe, which is a scandal. We need to break the vicious cycle and get children out of poverty.” But finalising a directive on minimum wage is not going to be quick or easy. “We have an obligation to consult with social partners.” And there are two different areas that need to be addressed. Firstly, in those countries that already have a minimum wage, there must be a guarantee that people can get by on that salary. “That is a measure to fight in-work poverty.” Secondly, those six member states which do not currently have a minimum wage law include countries--notably the three Nordic countries and Austria--that have high coverage of collective bargaining contracts, which they are unwilling to surrender. “We will have to find compromises but not fake solutions.” In Luxembourg, the social inclusion income, introduced on 1 January 2019, which is basically an allowance for taking part in accredited activities such as community work, is also expected to help reduce poverty, states the European Commission report. Though the authors also note that “according to civil society actors, its real impact on poverty will actually depend largely on whether the new activation measures succeed in promoting active inclusion and ensuring transitions towards employment”. In its report, Statec noted that “without state intervention via social transfers, poverty [in Luxembourg] would be even more pronounced; the rate would peak at 27.5% instead of 18.3%”. The problem is that for many who live and work or even just visit Luxembourg, poverty is hidden. Indeed, if you meet Sarah, you would never guess she’s feeling the pinch. She’s active in her community, has a positive outlook, and knows she’s resourceful. And she’s certain she will make ends meet, even if that will take a bit of reassessing. ×

Delano.lu, Luxembourg in English (and digital) More information: maisonmoderne.com

90,500 English speakers in Luxembourg

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05/03/2020 09:32

MARCH/APRIL 2020

An EU closer to the people interview

words

European Parliament

Natalie A. Gerhardstein

photo

Uli Schillebeeckx

natalie a. gerhardstein

How has it been working as an MEP since you assumed the role in July 2019?

influence people at home and across Europe, to maintain this precious EU that we have.

monica semedo

It was a very positive surprise for me to get elected, and I immediately felt honoured. I compare the [start] to the first day of high school, in a new, bigger city, a new building, new people… I have to say, after more than six months, I really love it. I feel so comfortable, that I’m really at the right place at the right time-as a convinced European, a Luxembourger, [and] someone who loves different cultures and the diversity we have in Luxembourg, for example, and also in Europe. And I want to preserve that. My belly really aches if I see that some people no longer want that or try to destroy what we have built. I’m convinced from the heart, and I’m ready to give everything during this mandate, to come up with new ideas, to

Speaking of which, what’s your view now that the UK has formally left the EU?

Brexit’s not over. There’s still so much uncertainty. Mr Johnson doesn’t want to ask for a prolongation [to the transition period], so everything has to be settled by the end of December 2020. What happens after that, and will Mr Barnier get an agreement with the UK? It’s this huge uncertainty that has sparked many emotions. And it’s such little time. Now, in order to build something together, we have to dismantle 47 years of integration by the end of 2020. I talked to Mr Barnier as part of a group of MEPs under 40, and he’s really sincere. He says it’s almost impossible, but we’ll strive to get the best out of the agreement for both sides, especially for citizens and

their rights. It’s a sad period, but the motivation and the relationships are maintained. Brexit caused more than 1 million people to go out on the street, demonstrating, speaking out for Europe. I don’t remember the last time this happened in the EU on the continent. So, you know there are people who want to be part of the EU. There’s still hope. What are the main challenges you think the EU is facing in 2020, and beyond?

First of all, tackling climate change is the main priority of the [European] Commission and finds its way into all kinds of legislation. At the same time, digitalisation goes hand in hand. For me, a Europe that is closer to the people again is important. My generation grew up in a European Union that grew more and more together, we got more freedoms, more rights. Maybe people don’t feel that anymore →

“ Luxembourg and the EU gave me equal chances and opportunities.”

European Parliament

Monica Semedo is in the spotlight again as one of the grand duchy’s six MEPs. In an interview in Brussels in early February, the former RTL presenter and journalist talked about her enthusiasm for the new job and the challenges the EU faces as it comes to terms with Brexit and maintaining its appeal to a new generation.

MARCH/APRIL 2020

An EU closer to the people interview

words

European Parliament

Natalie A. Gerhardstein

photo

Uli Schillebeeckx

natalie a. gerhardstein

How has it been working as an MEP since you assumed the role in July 2019?

influence people at home and across Europe, to maintain this precious EU that we have.

monica semedo

Speaking of which, what’s your view now that the UK has formally left the EU?

“ Luxembourg and the EU gave me equal chances and opportunities.”

European Parliament

I support it because I’m convinced someone who works 8 hours or half-time should get the pay he deserves for his work, and everybody should be covered by it. It should guarantee that everyone, with or without qualification, receives a minimum of pay. These negotiations won’t be easy. If I speak to my Scandinavian colleagues, they don’t like even the idea of such a minimum wage, but I think especially in Sweden and so on, they are quite well covered by collective agreements. Your name’s on the motion for a resolution on the gender pay gap. Do you think Europe is making strides in this domain?

We still have a gender pay gap of more than 16%--in Luxembourg it’s lower, but in some countries, it’s even higher. So why should someone get 20% less because she’s a woman? We are a modern culture, so we also need rules or maybe legal instruments. But I think we need to convince member states to raise social standards. People survived the financial crisis, but people suffered, often. It’s now time to invest in people, children, education. What’s the European Parliament like day to day? How are you managing your time, and is there any semblance of a ‘typical day’ for you?

Sometimes, I wake up and am not sure if I’m home in Luxembourg, in Brussels, or in Strasbourg. It’s quite a busy new lifestyle with a lot of travel. No day is the same. It’s not comparable. One day I attend the economic and monetary affairs committee, one day I have culture and education, one day I have employment and social affairs, or the social economy intergroup where I have become one of the chairs. Another day is gender mainstreaming, where I’m also responsible for

What are you doing to represent Luxembourg’s interests, and what feedback are you getting from your constituents?

I try to take all the values we have as the DP, but also as Luxembourgers. So in between the French and German opinions [which] can be quite opposite, or to unite Scandinavians with Eastern Europeans, for example. And I think that’s always of interest to Luxembourg. I try in the economic and monetary affairs committee to preserve the competitiveness not only of Luxembourg but all of the member states which have, like us, a financial centre. I also try to foster financial literacy for young entrepreneurs. I think if someone has a good idea, you should get the best chance to realise it. Luxembourg has quite a special view because we have so many cross-border workers, for example, so any proposal from the commission, I also have to introduce this argument, whereas o ther countries are less dependent on them… this is a Luxembourgish voice. You’ve talked about how your professional experience as a presenter and journalist has helped you in your current role. Tell us more about the approach you’ve taken to communication, including social media. What is a politician’s responsibility in this regard?

It should be honest. I was always straightforward when I was a TV presenter, as a journalist: I asked the questions I wanted to ask and until I had an answer. It was satisfying. I really try to show people that it’s not just the plenary, not just Brussels-and it’s not far away, it’s quite near, and

→ A freshly elected Monica Semedo at the committee on employment and social affairs constitutive meeting for the election of chair and vice-chairs in Strasbourg in July 2019

Photo → Mathieu Cugnot/European Parliament

With regards to social and employment affairs, what’s your take on Nicolas Schmit’s goal to have a European minimum wage?

Renew Europe. So, I have an eye on each policy. Having been a journalist also helps, because as a journalist, you work and work. You often don’t have fixed times so if you have an idea, someone contacts you over Facebook, you react to get the story. And here it’s the same. If I hear something I don’t know, I immediately go and check what it is because I want to know (…) I also have to inform myself on other policies [outside of the committees on which I sit]. There’s also an exchange with other offices. For example, [the ACP-EU joint parliamentary assembly] covers different regions, including Africa, and this gives you new ideas. When commissioner [Margaritis] Schinas said he would like to open an Erasmus+ for exchanges with the African continent (…) I had to tell him that it’s also important to foster the integration of migrants or people with a migrant background, political refugees for example, for those who are now part of the EU who live here.

European Parliament

MARCH/APRIL 2020

because of the huge changes we had, like the removal of borders or the euro. I think the next step is to ensure that citizens really feel the EU is there for them: [so they can say] ‘the EU facilitates my life, the EU supports me in my rights, and on equal treatment’. For me, Luxembourg and the EU gave me equal chances and opportunities--to travel, to fall in love abroad. It gave me so much, I want to give back. That’s why a more social but still liberal Europe is important--to once again focus on citizens, and with the liberty to have the choice between alternatives, so (…) [they] can assume responsibility afterwards. And I’m someone who loves freedom… so I can 100% support this.

SEMEDO IN PARLIAMENT Member →C ommittee on employment and social affairs →D elegation to the ACP-EU joint parliamentary assembly Substitute →C ommittee on economic and monetary affairs →C ommittee on culture and education →D elegation for relations with the countries of the Andean community →D elegation to the Euro-Latin American parliamentary assembly MonicaSemedoLux

6 LUXEMBOURG MEPS → Marc Angel (LSAP) → Charles Goerens (DP) → Christophe Hansen (CSV) → Tilly Metz (Déi Gréng) → Monica Semedo (DP) → Isabel Wiseler-Lima (CSV)

Source → europarl.europa.eu

I’m there, and they can ask questions if they want. I really try to connect on social media. I didn’t want to change too much in comparison to before. Sometimes, I make a short video, and I do this spontaneously. I want to go outside, not always make the video in the same rooms. I’m still discovering all the places [at the parliament] and I will show them to my followers. To me it’s fun. I do posts and videos I think I would like to see from a young MEP who shares this amazing experience with others. Also, on Linkedin, it’s quite a different audience, but there are so many different possibilities. And as I’m here or in Strasbourg all week, I also want to feel a connection to people. I really would like them to get to know more about the other MEPs. I will still have time in the next years. If we have these tools, we should use them. I have not been on Facebook for years now. I always shared my experiences on the job, and I don’t want to stop with that. [Former Liberal Democrat] MEP Luisa Porritt was the first video, because I thought they deserve to see the human side of Brexit. She’s back in London, but she doesn’t work as a journalist anymore, she has no job. It was important to show that because people were often fed up with the negotiations.

On that note, you’re in regular touch with the youth?

Yes, I will be part of a Lymec [European Liberal Youth] event together with Svenja Hahn, who’s a German MEP for the FDP. I was in Luxembourg with 160 trainees of the EU institutions, this was very interesting. They told me what worked, what didn’t work, and I will raise these questions if it’s discussed. I want this real-life input, also from young entrepreneurs. I will be reporter for Creative Europe, replacing [Liberal Democrat] Shaffaq [Mohammed] who has left because he is British. There you have this media and cultural aspect. I like to combine all three, culture, education and employment, and economics. It’s a good combination, I love it.

tions but the way people live together, in all respects. This is what we want for the EU, in fact. Do you have any particular favourite part of the job?

I enjoy the WhatsApp groups with my MEP friends and neighbours. We live like door to door in one building. Most of us are female MEPs. We laugh a lot. They’re like me: if they hear music, they have to dance. That’s normal--in fact, I grew up like that. This human side is my favourite part. Coming in every day, the people we work with--not just politicians, but here in the restaurant… It gives you a little the feeling of being home, and after only six months. It’s good to see you’re smiling!

Through what lens do you foremost see or define yourself?

That’s quite difficult. I’m a ‘Maacher Meedchen’, raised in Grevenmacher. I am one hundred percent Luxembourger, and I can be happy to have been born and raised in Luxembourg. And I’m also with all my heart European. I can’t separate that. Grevenmacher lies on the border with Germany. Luxembourg is in the heart of Europe and such a European city not only because of the EU institu-

I think it will stay. I didn’t have a lot of time after the elections… I took time during the Christmas break just to rest. I needed to rest. I visited friends and family, and I told them I really now just want to rethink what amazing things happened and how my life changed. There was such a big turnaround in the last two years it’s important sometimes to think what someone went through [and] if it is positive, to cherish it more, × to get new energy.

What are you doing to represent Luxembourg’s interests, and what feedback are you getting from your constituents?

→ A freshly elected Monica Semedo at the committee on employment and social affairs constitutive meeting for the election of chair and vice-chairs in Strasbourg in July 2019

Photo → Mathieu Cugnot/European Parliament

With regards to social and employment affairs, what’s your take on Nicolas Schmit’s goal to have a European minimum wage?

European Parliament

MARCH/APRIL 2020

6 LUXEMBOURG MEPS → Marc Angel (LSAP) → Charles Goerens (DP) → Christophe Hansen (CSV) → Tilly Metz (Déi Gréng) → Monica Semedo (DP) → Isabel Wiseler-Lima (CSV)

Source → europarl.europa.eu

On that note, you’re in regular touch with the youth?

tions but the way people live together, in all respects. This is what we want for the EU, in fact. Do you have any particular favourite part of the job?

Through what lens do you foremost see or define yourself?

Photo → Mike Zenari (archives)

Driving change essay

Mobility

As environmental policy begins to take a driving seat in motoring habits, hard-hit consumers and stakeholders question the coherence of these decisions. words

Jess Bauldry

his year is set to be an expensive one for motorists. Even before the scheduled increase of excise duty, at the start of the year the cost of diesel reached its highest levels since 2014. Fuel has always been subject to fluctuations triggered by global shocks, be they tensions between the US and Iran or the coronavirus epidemic. According to Luxembourg energy minister Claude Turmes (Déi Gréng), a shift to vehicles powered by electricity generated domestically should “enhance our energy security. Because we will be less dependent on nice people like Mr Putin or on very stable regions like the Middle East.” This is one motivation for the government’s target to ensure half of the country’s stock of private vehicles, about 230,000 c ars, are “emission free” by 2030. Another is the urgent need to deliver climate change reductions to reduce emissions by 20% compared to 2005 levels, agreed as part of the 2020 Paris climate targets. Tank tourism

Low excise on petrol and diesel means that not only do people over the borders drive to Luxembourg to fill up on cheap fuel, it also makes economic sense for hauliers to get gas in the grand duchy. Even if this fuel is not entirely burned in Luxembourg, fuel sales impact the country’s CO2 balance. As a result, transport accounts for two-thirds of the country’s emissions. The government’s solution is

Since trucks will continue to drive through Luxembourg to reach their destinations, Antonio da Palma Ferramacho, head of mobility for the Automobile Club of Luxembourg, is sceptical about the good intentions of the excise hike. “In the end, they’ve just displaced the location where you count the CO2. But it’s not reducing the CO2.” This may not be the case for long. Turmes expects truck fleet electrification to follow starting 2024. And, once innovation makes electric cheaper than diesel, he says “this market transformation could happen more quickly than in the individual mobility”. Based on the current pace of change, da Palma Ferramacho finds the timeframe overly optimistic. For him the future of zero emission mobility can only be a combination of electric and hydrogen fuel cells. “But we need to overcome the technology hurdles of hydrogen. We need to be able to produce hydrogen in an economic and environmentally friendly manner. It’s not yet the case.” Cautious interest

In the domain of private and company cars, the shift to zero emission is growing, albeit slowly. Today, 2.5% of the national pool of vehicles in Luxembourg are zero or low emission cars[1]. At the 2020 Autofestival, Luxembourg automotive federation Fedamo reported a cautious interest in electric vehicles and hybrids, because “the customer has to inform himself and make the necessary investments for the charging infrastructure”. EVs can be charged slowly when plugged into a regular socket. But not everyone has a garage at home, which leaves the Chargy stations. At the start of 2019, just 277 of →

Under EU law, the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP) is used to measure fuel consumption and CO2 emissions from passenger cars based on real-driving data. It better matches on-road performance and so replaces the outdated New European Driving Cycle, which was designed in the 1980s and was based on theoretical driving. ↳ www.wltp.lu

Total pool of private cars in Luxembourg by fuel type (%) Elecric and hybrid vehicles remain far from the government’s goal of 50% by 2030. 100

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

New vehicles registered annually by fuel type (%) Petrol cars outsold diesel models in Luxembourg for the first time in 2018. 100

2015

2016

Diesel Petrol Hybrid Electric

2017

2018

2019

Source → National Society of Automotive Traffic (SNCA)

MARCH/APRIL 2020

CO2 displacement

WHAT IS WLTP?

Mobility

to increase excise duties on fuel. In May 2019, they increased the duty by 2 cents per litre on diesel and 1 cent per litre on petrol. The effect, estimated to add €25 to households’ annual expenditure, stalled fuel sale growth. Now a second hike is expected before April of 3-5 cents, which could push hauliers to refuel elsewhere. “We expect the rise will be budget neutral,” Turmes said. “So, we will get more income on the one hand, but we will lose some millions [in sales of] litres and that will be budget neutral.” The government’s “general principle” on CO2 pricing means 50% of these revenues will go into “creating alternatives and the remainder to compensating low income households in Luxembourg”. The latter forms part of the next tax reform effective from 1 January 2021, which Turmes was reluctant to expand on.

Photo → Mike Zenari (archives)

Driving change essay

Mobility

As environmental policy begins to take a driving seat in motoring habits, hard-hit consumers and stakeholders question the coherence of these decisions. words

Jess Bauldry

Total pool of private cars in Luxembourg by fuel type (%) Elecric and hybrid vehicles remain far from the government’s goal of 50% by 2030. 100

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

New vehicles registered annually by fuel type (%) Petrol cars outsold diesel models in Luxembourg for the first time in 2018. 100

2015

2016

Diesel Petrol Hybrid Electric

2017

2018

2019

Source → National Society of Automotive Traffic (SNCA)

MARCH/APRIL 2020

CO2 displacement

WHAT IS WLTP?

Mobility

MARCH/APRIL 2020

the 800 public electric charging posts had been installed in Luxembourg[2]. Turmes said a further 200 “plugs” were expected in 2020, to be followed by fast-charging stations. But presently motorists report difficulties in finding stations. Entrepreneur Daniel Eischen bought an Audi Q5 hybrid plugin at the end of 2019. “The charging situation is catastrophic!” Because of the lack of charging stations nearby, he is now considering installing a private charging station at his work. “I’m thinking of getting an electric scooter to put in the car. Then I will charge my car a block down the road and take the scooter the last mile to the office. It’s not natural!” Eischen admits he could have done more research before opting for a hybrid but even then he would have been confronted with a mass of conflicting information. Conflicting information

“Some people are lost,” da Palma Ferramacho said, citing a customer doing 50,000 kilometres per year who wanted to switch to a hybrid. “I said it doesn’t make sense. It’s worth it for driving in the city or congested areas. But for long distances, the best at the moment is diesel.” Diesel was initially promoted as the answer to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because it used less fuel and more air to get the same performance as a petrol engine. It was hailed despite emitting toxic nitrogen oxides. The latest Euro 5 diesels produce almost no nitrogen oxides associated with causing premature deaths[3]. Yet the dieselgate scandal has tarred its image, and today European cities are moving to ban older diesels. In 2018, petrol vehicle sales overtook those of diesel in Luxembourg and the trend continues with diesel accounting for just 41.9% of newly registered vehicles in 2019[4]. “New diesels are now compliant to euro norms and they are as clean as petrol cars. But still governments keep on this direction to blame and eliminate diesel,” da Palma Ferramacho laments. For Turmes, there is no discrimination: he wants to eliminate all internal combustion vehicles to achieve 100% emission-free technology. “There’s no such thing as a climate compatible diesel or petrol engine. It can only be an emission-free technology,” he says. But the growing urgency to arrive at this emission-free future places a great deal of pressure on manufacturers to innovate, which comes at a price that not everyone can afford. Cost

While EV pricing is becoming more competitive and maintenance costs are

supposedly lower, EVs are still more expensive than internal combustion engine counterparts to purchase. A recent KPMG survey of executives[5] found “the most significant barriers into the electric world are price, followed by charging and range”. Repeated charging of EV batteries decreases the amount of charge they can hold, impacting range and the charging time. While most manufacturers issue a five to eight-year warranty on their battery, on the secondhand market the battery will eventually need to be replaced. According to BloombergNEF, a research outfit, EV battery prices are falling fast and it forecasts that by 2023 average prices will be close to $100/kWh. Meanwhile range is improving with a maximum autonomy of around 500 kilometres from the best performers and the newest batteries. In Luxembourg the existing EV subsidy (€5,000 for the purchase of an EV or hydrogen and €2,500 for new hybrids) will be reviewed for 2021. ACL wants to see this scheme extended a further five years and more fairly distributed to favour the purchase of entry level EVs over top-end brands like Tesla. Turmes, meanwhile, expects EV pricing to fall. “The biggest bottleneck to electromobility until now was the lack of attractive models,” the minister said. “I expect the next Autofestival will be one where most of the cars in the showrooms will be electric.”

TAKEN FOR A RIDE Motorists who don’t switch to zero or low emission vehicles face mounting costs. May 2019 Excise duty was raised 2 cents per litre for diesel and 1 cent per litre for petrol. Now--April 2020 A second excise duty hike is planned of 3-5 cents per litre. On an annual distance of 20,000 kilometres, the government estimated it would set households back €20 per year. The Automobile Club of Luxembourg estimates the annual costs as closer to €150. Delayed Luxembourg will soon switch from the NEDC to the WLTP measurement system (see box on page 43), giving a more accurate emission reading for vehicles and raising them by 10%. Once it enters into force, this will impact the emissions brackets into which new vehicles purchased after this date fall and subsequently the road tax car owners pay. ACL estimates the increased costs to the consumer at €150 per year, depending on the vehicle type. Initially scheduled for 1 March 2020, the law has been delayed for some fine-tuning. For drivers with company cars, the adoption of the WLTP will increase the amount of monthly benefit in kind paid on the highest emitting vehicles. This applies to new vehicles leased from 1 January 2020 but is not payable until 1 January 2021.

Outstanding questions

That leaves EV residual values and future electricity costs. Calculating secondhand EV residuals is difficult because technology is evolving so quickly. To be viable on the second-hand market, EVs need to be affordable. An idea mooted in a petition to subsidise the purchase of secondhand EVs could help. The cost of electricity, meanwhile, depends on the wholesale market. Enovos, which supplies most of Luxembourg’s Chargy stations with green electricity, increased its rates from 20 to 26 cents/kWh at the start of 2020, a price that is fixed for the next three years. Later on, however, there are fears EV drivers could be held hostage, particularly when fast charging stations are rolled out in Luxembourg. This anxiety was further fuelled by reports from abroad like the Ionity fast charging network which, on 31 January 2020, increased rates to 79 cents/kWh for eurozone countries. The key for Turmes is to avoid racketeering from one single electricity supplier having the monopoly. “We will come up with a system where there will be competition between the different providers, which will lower the prices,” he said. ×

[1] Fedamo → [2] Chargy → [3] Adac 2019 → [4] SNCA → [5] KPMG

2021 The tax on fossil fuels will start at €20/tonne of CO2, rising to €5 each following year to 2023. Expected to bring revenues of €100m to €120m, part of it will be used as a tax compensation measure and will be offset with a tax credit for those on low incomes. 2021 Vehicle tax reform expected.

reportage

Blood donors

In the bag

words

Duncan Roberts photos Mike Zenari

Blood donors

MARCH/APRIL 2020 ↑ Frédéric is a regular who donates blood every three months. He knows first-hand how important it is to give blood as his son once required a transfusion

Each year, the Red Cross blood transfusion centre on the edge of the city park has to find 1,000 new donors to ensure that the country’s stocks of blood, plasma and platelets is maintained. Head of the centre’s medical unit Dr Anne Schumacher explains that the majority of donors, those registered in a database, are invited to the centre to regularly give blood--men can donate every three months and women every four months. Donors have to be aged over 18 and cannot become new donors if older than 60. The Red Cross also has a mobile unit that travels the country to collect blood in provincial towns or at businesses. Because donations are separated into three different products--red blood, plasma and platelets--each donor is essentially saving three lives. “It is not often you get a chance to do that with a simple gesture,” says Schumacher.

reportage

Blood donors

In the bag

words

Duncan Roberts photos Mike Zenari

Blood donors

MARCH/APRIL 2020 ↑ Frédéric is a regular who donates blood every three months. He knows first-hand how important it is to give blood as his son once required a transfusion

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Blood donors

← Potential donors are given a blood test and asked questions about their health in a private room before they are registered in the blood donor database

→ Paul, another regular, was asked to donate much-needed plasma as he had a good supply. The process often takes up to an hour, rather than the 10 minutes required to donate blood

↗ After separation, red blood is stored in a quarantined environment in cooling trays at 2 degrees centigrade

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Blood donors

← Potential donors are given a blood test and asked questions about their health in a private room before they are registered in the blood donor database

→ Paul, another regular, was asked to donate much-needed plasma as he had a good supply. The process often takes up to an hour, rather than the 10 minutes required to donate blood

↗ After separation, red blood is stored in a quarantined environment in cooling trays at 2 degrees centigrade

MARCH/APRIL 2020 ↑ ↑ Blood samples are tested anonymously in the centre’s laboratory for HIV, hepatitis B or C, syphilis, anaemia and some infectious disease pathogens

↑ Dr Anne Schumacher, head of the medical unit at the transfusion centre

↑ Plasma, which has the longest shelf-life of all blood products, is stored chronologically in aerated bags at controlled temperatures before being flash frozen for delivery

Blood donors

↓ The Red Cross centre holds Luxembourg’s central stock of blood products and supplies the six major hospitals in the grand duchy

MARCH/APRIL 2020 ↑ ↑ Blood samples are tested anonymously in the centre’s laboratory for HIV, hepatitis B or C, syphilis, anaemia and some infectious disease pathogens

↑ Dr Anne Schumacher, head of the medical unit at the transfusion centre

↑ Plasma, which has the longest shelf-life of all blood products, is stored chronologically in aerated bags at controlled temperatures before being flash frozen for delivery

Blood donors

↓ The Red Cross centre holds Luxembourg’s central stock of blood products and supplies the six major hospitals in the grand duchy

← Inside a Google data centre

oogle may or may not build a massive data centre complex in Bissen, near Colmar-Berg. Many residents are worried about the potential environmental impact if the project proceeds, particularly in a country that imports the vast majority of its energy and whose government has committed the country to reaching its Paris climate change goals. According to tentative plans, the Google site will have three data centre units, an administrative building, a warehouse and some other structures. There has been conjecture that it would be Google’s largest data centre in Europe. But a Google spokesman told Delano in February “that’s speculative as we expand in several locations and there’s no decision on” whether or not the internet company will actually construct the complex in the grand duchy or not. It would be big, assuming the draft plans revealed to the public go through, admittedly a big assumption. “The millions of square metres of data centre that could be built on this plot of land has the potential of bringing its size up to around 15 times the size of Luxembourg’s largest [retail complex] and third largest employer La Belle Étoile shopping centre,” Data Economy, an industry news site, wrote in January 2019. Since then, the Cloche d’Or shopping centre has opened, which conceivably could be just one-eighth the size of the Google facility.

Data centre questions words

Aaron Grunwald

Photo → Google

Some residents are worried about energy and water usage at a possible Google data centre in the grand duchy. Which begs the question: how green are existing data centres here? It is difficult to judge, since most operators are hesitant to provide details, at least to Delano.

Photo → Maison Moderne (archives)

IT infrastructure

Bissen site

Google has outlined some, but not all, details of its potential data centre designs in Luxembourg over the drawn-out planning process. The internet giant has been exploring the construction of data centres in the grand duchy since at least July 2017. It acquired the 33.7-hectare site in Bissen, reportedly for €35m, in December 2017 after

→ Google’s Fabien Vieau is seen during a meeting in Bissen, December 2018

Claude Turmes, secretary of state for sustainable development and infrastructure (Green party), stated in January 2020, in response to a parliamentary question from the MP Fernand Kartheiser (ADR), that Google would eventually produce wind power in addition to solar. As for tapping the Alzette, Turmes said the amount of cool water drawn and then warm water returned into the river would have to be calculated so the river’s temperature did not increase by more than 3 degrees Celsius (the amount set by Luxembourg environmental regulations) and that wildlife would be protected. Google could potentially create a reservoir to help manage cooling water needs, but “the site’s exact water management plan… is not yet known.” Some inhabitants of Bissen have said Google has not been transparent about its plans and is not communicating clearly with residents. The Google spokesman told Delano: “We’ve done our best to be as open as possible, and the fact that we’ve done a townhall with hundreds of citizens attending is just one example of that.” Vieau told Politico in February 2020 that the tech outfit was not trying to →

IT infrastructure

MARCH/APRIL 2020

lengthy negotiations. (A recalcitrant farmer had refused to sell his piece of the land for several months. Luxembourg’s government apparently facilitated the talks that led to the transactions being completed.) It took another two years to receive planning permission. During a public meeting in December 2019, Google stated that investment on the site in Bissen would be €1.2bn. Work could theoretically begin in 2021 and finish in 2023 or 2024. After completion, the facility would employ roughly 100 staff. Google received authorisation from the Bissen municipal council in January 2019, but has yet to commit to the project. Two open questions are electricity and water consumption. It is estimated that the Google data centre would initially use about 7% of Luxembourg’s current power supply; later it would take 12% of present capacity. Fabien Vieau, Google’s regional director for data centre energy and location strategy, who is in charge of the project, said in a December 2018 townhall meeting that it would install 10,000 solar panels at the site. The tech giant also needed to study how much water it can safely pump from the nearby Alzette river to use for cooling the data centre’s servers.

← Inside a Google data centre

Data centre questions words

Aaron Grunwald

Photo → Google

Photo → Maison Moderne (archives)

IT infrastructure

Bissen site

→ Google’s Fabien Vieau is seen during a meeting in Bissen, December 2018

IT infrastructure

MARCH/APRIL 2020

be cagey about its plans, with the news site writing that “the lack of information is because the data centre is not yet fully designed, so [Google] can’t precisely assess water and electricity consumption”. Delano asked Google several questions about expected energy and water use in Luxembourg, as well as efficiency measures. The spokesman said in February: “We have not taken a business decision about whether we proceed with a data centre in Luxembourg thus many of the questions are difficult to answer.” He pointed Delano to the company’s sustainability website (www.sustainability.google) which stated that “on average, a Google data centre is twice as energy efficient as a typical enterprise data centre” and that “Google is the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy”. The site claimed Google’s data centres globally had gotten about 6.5% more energy efficient between the end of 2008 and 2019, and that it strives to “maximise efficient use” of water. Delano’s super small survey

Luxembourg is already home to dozens of data centres. So how do they stack

up, environmentally speaking? Delano contacted 24 data centre service providers in Luxembourg. We asked a series of questions about energy and water consumption, sourcing and efficiency efforts. Clearstream, the financial services provider owned by Deutsche Börse Group and one of Luxembourg’s largest employers, agreed to disclose data on the record. Two data centre operators agreed to participate confidentially. Two others initially said they would provide information, but then later changed course and said they would not comment. Four said they resold services at data centres operated by other firms and could not provide firsthand figures, although some of Delano’s questions pertained to the use of monitoring tools and changes in user behaviour (see box to right). The vast majority declined or did not reply at all. Normally, this is where Delano would tell you exactly who we contacted, but doing so might inadvertently reveal the companies which were promised anonymity. Considering Delano’s very small sample size, it was difficult to come to any conclusions about Luxembourg data →

WHAT WE ASKED Delano contacted more than 20 data centre operators in Luxembourg with environmental and energy questions. Only three outfits provided answers. Here is the information we requested:

• How many data centres do • • •

• • •

↓ Inside the Clearstream data centre in Kirchberg

•

• • • •

• • •

•

you have located in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg? How much energy did your data centres in Luxembourg consume in 2019, 2018 and 2017? What was the source of that energy? How does this energy usage compare with any data centres that you operate outside of Luxembourg? How much water did your data centres in Luxembourg consume in 2019, 2018 and 2017? What is the source of that water? How does this water usage compare with any data centres that you operate outside of Luxembourg? Do you provide monitoring and reporting of energy and water usage for your clients/users? If “yes”, please describe how the monitoring and reporting works. If “yes”, why did you introduce these tools? If “yes”, what percentage of your clients/users take advantage of your energy and water usage monitoring and reporting tools? If “yes”, have you observed any change in client/user behaviour or usage due to your monitoring and reporting tools? Do you specifically monitor your data centre greenhouse gas emissions? When and why did you start to monitor greenhouse gas emissions? Can you provide figures on your data centre greenhouse gas emissions? Do you have any programmes to reduce energy and water consumption currently in place? Planned? How successful have these consumption reduction schemes been? How do you dispose of old servers and other electrical equipment? In your company’s view, what is the environmental impact of constructing and operating a data centre? Any other comment or information on green data centres in Luxembourg that you can provide at this time?

Photo → Clearstream/Lee Mawdsley (archives)

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← Inside a data centre in Bettembourg

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Google currently has five European data centres: Dublin, Ireland; Eemshaven, Netherlands; Fredericia, Denmark; Hamina, Finland; and St Ghislain, Belgium. A Google spokesman told Delano: “We are currently building a new data centre in the Netherlands,” its second in the country. Aside from Luxembourg, it could expand elsewhere in the region. Google has “purchased land in several other countries, e.g., Sweden and Norway, but [has] not made any decisions whether we’ll build there, just like in Luxembourg.”

centres’ environmental performance. But we did find some firms were engaged on the topic. Clearstream, for example, said it consumed 5,675,771kWh in 2019, down from 7,014,349kWh in 2018 (which represented less than 0.1% of the country’s total electricity consumption), at its primary data centre (it has a separate backup facility in Luxembourg which is operated by a service provider). Clearstream said its data centre was run off “100% water energy”. Another operator said it used “100% renewable electricity”. The third punter revealed electricity consumption but not sourcing, although they noted that heat from computer equipment is used to heat its buildings and stated that “no energy at all is used for heating the building in normal winter conditions.” Clearstream also said it used server exhaust heat for its offices. Water use

Clearstream said water consumption at its self-operated data centre shrank from 9,955m3 in 2018 to 7,505m3 in 2019 (which is about a third of the total tap water

c onsumed in Luxembourg City each day). Data centres usually take water from the public network, but one operator said it used “rain water” when possible and another said it used zero water in winter. One data centre operator said its energy and water usage was collected under its corporate social responsibility programme and reported twice a year. Another simply acknowledged that “yes, we do” track consumption. Clearstream said such “data is managed centrally by Deutsche Börse Group for all locations. Deutsche Börse Group reports on environmental data on its website.” All three participants said they monitored greenhouse gas emissions, with Clearstream saying it has tracked it “since 2006”. Another said it published figures in its annual report. And, again, all three outfits said they had programmes in place to reduce energy and water consumption. One organisation said it was in the process of replacing heat pumps, in order to reduce “electricity consumption and the total suppression of water consumption”. Clearstream said it tried “to minimise our ecological footprint”

by using cleverly designed IT kit. The other outfit said everything from air flow management to rainwater harvesting “have been deployed and are operated and optimised by an internal dedicated, trained staff”. Withholding judgement

Unfortunately, this exercise was ultima tely inconclusive. Delano cannot answer the question of how ecologically sound Luxembourg data centres are or are not. Although your correspondent suspects companies would be more forthcoming if they had something to crow about. Oh, and when does Google expect to make its final decision about the Bissen facility? The company’s spokesman said: “We don’t have a timeline for that. [It] depends on several things and I can’t give you a date on that.” ×

Photo → Lala La Photo (archives)

GOOGLE DATA CENTRES IN EUROPE

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Environment

Earth extinction

Biodiversity is the sum of all knowledge learned by evolving species over millions of years about how to survive conditions on Earth. It is under threat. words

photo

Jess Bauldry Gaël Lesure

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Extinction Some 8% of vascular plants in Luxembourg are regionally extinct and 9.2% critically endangered.[1]

Threatened In 2015, 3.4% of bird species in Luxembourg were threatened (5 out of 148).[3]

Restored plants Arnica, which reached critically low levels, is being brought back to the Oesling area through raising and reintroducing young plants.[2]

Lost birds Birdspotters will be hardpressed to find a breeding whinchat in Luxembourg since the species is now considered extinct there.[4]

Insects Insect populations are essential for the proper functioning of all ecosystems as food, pollinators and recyclers. In Germany, three-quarters of flying insects in nature reserves disappeared in the last 25 years.[2]

Lost plants Among the plant species that have vanished is huperzia selago, or northern firmoss, a fernlike plant that was last seen in the Mullerthal.[2]

Jobs 1 in 6 jobs in the EU depends to some extent on nature and biodiversity.[5]

Threatened birds Seven bird species in Luxembourg face extinction, including the grey partridge, corncrake, lapwing, loggerhead shrike, meadow pipit, northern wheatear and sedge warbler.[6]

Sources → [1] 2005 Luxembourg red list of threatened plants and species, Guy Colling → [2] Plos One 2017 CA Hallmann et al → [3] European red list of birds compiled by BirdLife International → [4] Dr Guy Colling, Natur Musée → [5] European Parliament resolution of 2 February 2016 on the mid-term review of the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy → [6] Natur&ëmwelt, Les Oiseaux du Luxembourg

The magazine that cultivates attitude at altitude More information: maisonmoderne.com

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Luxair passengers in 2018 (an increase of around 8% in a year)

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05/03/2020 13:42

special report

Asset management

high or very high risk of laundering. Luxembourg is a specialist in three of these: private banking, investment funds and trust company structures. To help, Luxembourg’s financial regulator, the CSSF, has published national and sectorial risk assessments, and has encouraged professionals to analyse these and explain why their own company’s position might have a different approach. This also follows the publication of regulatory circulars such as 18/698 which deal specifically with how investment fund managers operate, particularly in relation to AML policy. This year will also see the CSSF clarify and update some of its other key regulatory circulars. The regulator has let it be known that decision-makers--from both the private and public sectors--should not be surprised if a member of the FATF

1. AML under the spotlight Anti-money laundering has risen up the regulatory agenda recently, not least following recent high-profile cases around the world. The result is increased attention being paid to the topic, just at the time as Luxembourg’s AML practices are set to undergo a particularly rigorous external audit. From 26 October to 11 November this year the multinational Financial Action Task Force will conduct an in-depth review of the grand duchy’s AML stance. This is a routine procedure and will be the fourth such audit. “They will go out to market participants and work with them directly, whereas last time the focus was more from a technical compliance perspective,” said Michael Delano, an assurance partner with PwC Luxembourg specialising in the fund industry. In other words, this review will not just look at whether laws and regulations are in place, but also how businesses, regulators and the legal authorities are complying. High stakes

The stakes are high. Last autumn the FATF declared that Iceland had “strategic

deficiencies” in its approach to AML. It was put on a “grey list” along with the likes of the Bahamas, Panama and Yemen, hitting the country’s standing with international investors, partners, regulators and lawmakers. Furthermore, it is only six years since the grand duchy was removed from this grey list, after its AML framework was judged to have fallen short of the FATF’s norms in 2010. While this had few direct consequences, it hampered the country’s ability to make the case for its global business hub economic model. The country is keen to avoid this fate again and started preparing months ago. The Ministry of Justice has a dedicated team in place, and the regulators have been working to clarify regulations and raise awareness. The FATF has highlighted how it favours a “risk-based approach” to assessing the likelihood of money laundering occurring when working with different clients and partners in different countries. “This is about looking at where you focus your efforts and documenting how you respond to this,” Delano noted. Particularly in the fund industry, it is near impossible to verify every end investor, so focusing on those people and geographies which are most likely to cause concerns makes most sense. Speaking with a single voice

An added complication is that the FATF has highlighted several financial sector activities which it considers to be at

Asset management

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Changing environment

Investment funds are facing pressure on plenty of fronts: from sustainability disclosure requirements and liquidity stress tests to adapting to exchangetraded funds and appealing to millennials. But first, probing Luxembourg’s anti-money laundering practices.

→

Photo → PwC Luxembourg

Michael Delano Partner PwC

↓

“ Reassurance that well considered, bespoke plans have been implemented.”

special report

Asset management

The stakes are high. Last autumn the FATF declared that Iceland had “strategic

An added complication is that the FATF has highlighted several financial sector activities which it considers to be at

Asset management

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Changing environment

→

Photo → PwC Luxembourg

Michael Delano Partner PwC

↓

“ Reassurance that well considered, bespoke plans have been implemented.”

9.40

MARCH/APRIL 2020

9.20

9.00

team requests an interview this autumn. They will want practical explanations of AML policy planning and implementation. “They are unlikely to seek perfection, but reassurance that well considered, bespoke plans have been implemented, including processes to monitor changing risks,” Delano commented.

“The aim is to develop a methodology that encourages sustainability in all sectors, such as heavy manufacturing, for example, just as much as for more obviously green activities,” noted Nathalie Dogniez, a partner with PwC Luxembourg. “It is a question of looking at the business practices that make real reductions to greenhouse gas emissions.” Thus, the well-known car brand which

Luxembourg has a strategy to deal with this audit with the hope of avoiding the previous outcome. The authorities are in a dialogue with market players to maximise the country’s efforts of complying with and articulating these plans. × words

Stephen Evans

invests above industry average amounts in electric vehicle R&D will have a higher ESG ranking in its sector. The taxonomy will seek to define these types of distinctions sector by sector, enabling asset managers to create funds that sit on a spectrum of being more or less green. This is also a way to reduce investor concerns that healthy returns could be sacrificed in pursuit of sustainability considerations. Developing a taxonomy is complex, controversial work and will take years to complete, with rules needing to be tailored to the detailed specificities of each economic sector. Disclosure is key

Will the European Commission’s planned green investment taxonomy (i.e., classification) be the key to helping sustainable products go mainstream? Few expect it to be a magic bullet, and the moves towards more detailed environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting and changes to the EU’s Mifid II rules are liable to be just as significant. Ensuring that sustainable funds have ESG impact could be an important way for asset managers to add value and justify their management fees. Fund labelling schemes driven by private and public actors serve a niche, but they have failed to drive substantial growth as they only offer a partial solution. Ongoing steps by the EU feature a new approach based on encouraging increased transparency and rewarding businesses that make genuine improvements.

Photo → Mike Zenari (archives)

2. ESG policy takes shape

Nathalie Dogniez Partner PwC Luxembourg

↓

“ This is an important building block.”

The danger of mis-selling and greenwashing are a major concern. For a fund to lose money through maladministration is one thing, but the charges of hypocrisy that would come from promoting a green fund that is actually “brown” might be particularly damaging to a fund manager’s reputation. As for defining this ESG risk, Dogniez says there is more to it than a pick-and-mix approach using the taxonomy in isolation. “This is an important building block, but equally transformational will be recent changes to disclosure regulations.” An EU regulation on “sustainabilityrelated disclosures in the financial services sector” will require, from March 2021, each product to disclose the extent to which they are exposed to sustainability risk, how those risks are being monitored and the outcome. Large asset managers and sustainable products will also be required to disclose their impact on sustainability factors, such as environmental or employee → matters. Policymakers hope that, as

Source → Refinitiv World-Check

Iceland

Switzerland

Netherlands

Austria

Denmark

Sweden

Finland

Luxembourg

9.60

New Zealand

Nordway

Anti-money laundering risk profile Luxembourg has a “very low” weighting for money-laundering risk, according to data from Refinitiv. It is ranked 5th out of the 247 countries and territories tracked by the data firm. A high “master index” score “is indicative of a safer, low-risk country.”

For a richer life, however you define it. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re here to help you invest in the things that matter most to you. Quintet. For a richer life.

European ESG fund flows Net assets of European sustainable investment funds have increased by a healthy clip over the past decade, according to Morningstar.

Active funds Passive funds

$100bn $80bn

$40bn

MARCH/APRIL 2020

$20bn 0 -$20bn

well as helping with stock picking, this transparency will give tools to institutions seeking to be activist investors. Then there is also the planned reform of Mifid II which is making its way through the EU policymaking bodies. The “suitability tests” conducted on retail investors will be expanded to gauge their appetite for ESG risk, not just financial risk as at present. Opportunities and risks

While these are promising ideas, there are concerns in the industry that they are being asked to disclose and market their ESG investment stances before the technicalities of the taxonomy have been developed. “Funds could believe they are creating a green fund in good faith, only to find out in a couple of years that their assessments do not match those of the [European] Commission,” Dogniez noted. Yet even before these moves, the appetite for ESG products has started to boom. Morningstar analysts point to sustainable products in Europe accounting for €668bn of assets, up 58% in 2018. The hope is that the taxonomy and transparency approach will add value and head-off the risk of an investment bubble. × words

Stephen Evans

3. The fine art of liquidity testing Almost inevitably, after the Woodford blow up last year, regulators felt the need to act on fund liquidity rules.

2011

2012

2013

2014

The European Securities and Markets Authority issued a requirement for stress tests from October this year, and Luxembourg’s financial regulator, the CSSF, underlined global best practice with circular 19/733. What should fund businesses be doing? Ensuring that assets in a portfolio can be sold at a reasonable price when required is an essential, long-standing requirement for investment funds. So if liquidity management is not new, what is the intention of the latest moves by European and local supervisors? “Circular 19/733 is a digest of what the CSSF would like to see Ucits mancos and AIFMs implementing,” noted Alan Picone, a partner at KPMG Luxembourg. It is a distillation of the recommendations made in early 2018 by the global regulatory body Iosco. This underlines the need for fund businesses to ensure that liquidity risk management is embedded in the way funds are designed and are managed day-to-day. Perhaps the most significant change is that the regulator recommends clear disclosure in the annual report and prospectus of liquidity practises followed and tools used. If investors are warned of the risks they run, they can have fewer complaints if the worst happens. The CSSF’s circular is mainly targeted at the management companies of Ucits funds (of which Woodford Equity Income Fund was one), but the CSSF also recommends that alternative fund managers consider the details. Although alternatives have more flexibility with liquidity--often with monthly or quarterly redemptions--managers still need to

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

avoid having to freeze withdrawal, as happened to two Irish property funds at the end of January this year. Contingency plans > stress tests

Picone sees the main change as a shift in emphasis. “The main innovation is a move → from an obligation to define needs to

Photo → KPMG Luxembourg

2010

Source → Morningstar

$60bn

Alan Picone Partner KPMG Luxembourg

↓

“ Quite sceptical about the added value of stress testing.”

Biggest distribution challenges A majority of asset managers “are planning to offer more quant strategies and active or passive ETFs over the next three years”, which “will further increase the pressure on fees and thus on the operating margin”, according to a Deloitte poll of fund houses with €8tn in assets under management.

100% 75% 50%

MARCH/APRIL 2020

25% 0 Fee pressure

be more about meeting results,” he said. In particular, contingency plans need to be in place and tested, and this feeds into the next major challenge in this area: Esma’s stress tests scheduled for after their guidelines become applicable from 30 September. Measuring and testing liquidity is something of an art form, as it requires taking a view on potential future events, which are not only virtually impossible to quantify and can be beyond the control of regulators and governments, let alone fund managers. “I am generally quite sceptical about the added value of stress testing,” noted Picone. A standard stress test will take a market scenario using historical data, and match that to the current portfolio. However, how much insight does this exercise bring? “Sure, if the market falls by 50%, your portfolio might drop by a similar amount, but that doesn’t tell us much. What matters is the loss magnitude in conjunction with the probability of this happening. These two facets are needed to make your stress test informational and actionable.” Whole organisation engaged

So to measure the full impact, he recommends risk management becoming a responsibility for the entire organisation, not just risk management teams. After all, the big message from Woodford was that the entire organisation--from the board of directors downwards--needed to push back on an investment strategy which took fund regulations beyond breaking point. To facilitate fresh thinking, Picone suggests that funds could be somewhat creative with their stress testing. For example, identifying the most potentially harmful scenarios and drawing up contingency plans for those--rather than running a series of standard calculations-could highlight some important areas

Regulation constraints

Increased costs

that might need more work. This type of proactive stance is more likely to satisfy regulators now that this question is being taken seriously and might prevent your fund from hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons. × words

Stephen Evans

4. ETF pressure Exchange-traded funds--lower cost investment funds that are traded on stock markets--are changing the shape of Luxembourg’s fund industry. What challenges are they creating and will ETFs continue to grow or will demand flatten? Delano spoke with Chrystelle Veeckmans, partner at KPMG, Markus Schwamborn, senior manager at Deloitte, and Manooj Mistry, head of ETFs and index investing at DWS. ETFs are putting pressure on many fund service companies’ margins. Is this having a negative impact on Luxembourg’s investment fund sector? Or is it just another form of evolution?

“While the asset management industry is still very profitable, ETFs and the shift from active to passive investments have been leading disruptors in the sector. There is still a lot of scope for disruption--costs must go down, while innovation, client focus and social responsibility must improve. This industry plays an important role in helping people save; Luxembourg must adapt, but ultimately a more efficient and sustainable industry will benefit us all.” veeckmans

“Exchange-traded funds are indeed putting pressure on industry margins. They reinforce the global trends → of continuous fee erosion and cost schwamborn

Changing customer demand

Lack of scale

STRESS TESTS The European Securities and Markets Authority liquidity stress tests of investment funds will apply to assets and liabilities of funds managed by Ucits mancos and AIFMs. They will follow Esma guidelines, which follow recommendations by the European Systemic Risk Board published in April 2018. These guidelines will become applicable on 30 September 2020 and come on top of current stress testing procedures in existing directives. ↳ www.esma.europa.eu

Source → Deloitte,“Asset Management Survey”, January 2020

For its 20th anniversary, Paperjam reflects on the future of Luxembourg. Share the questions you may have about Luxembourg in 20 years on social media via #Paperjam20ans #Luxembourg2040

210x265_Delano-campagne PJ20.indd 1

11/12/2019 11:45

“The long-term trend towards low cost passive investing is unlikely to damage Luxembourg’s fund sector. More ETFs will come to market, and many of them will be domiciled in Luxembourg.” mistry

The ETF boom can be explained by the demand for cheap, tech and mass products. More sophisticated investors are seeking the power of two: the right combination of active and index equity strategies to meet their investment outcome.” “Both occur, but are difficult to quantify. Existing investors in non-ETFs may switch into ETFs, attracted, for example, by lower annual fees and the ease of buying and selling them via stock exchanges. At the same time, tech-savvy millennials are discovering new, digitalised ways of investing, such as robo-advice, which are often based on ETFs.” schwamborn

Ireland

Luxembourg

Germany

France

Switzerland

Total

Assets under management

“ETFs are definitely attracting more investors to the funds market. Here in Europe, more retail investors are using ETFs to access the equity market, and institutional investors are increasingly using fixed income ETFs as an access tool for trading fixed income exposures.” mistry

$800bn $700bn $600bn $500bn $400bn $300bn $200bn $100bn

mistry “[W]e expect the index and ETF market to be a fast growing segment.”

1,200

words

Aaron Grunwald

2019

Number of ETFs by domicile

2019

“We expect continued growth for the ETF segment, as more and more retail investors discover ETFs, especially in Europe and Asia. We also expect further innovation, such as a greater number of actively managed ETFs and so-called ‘smart-beta’ ETFs, which will enhance choice and attract additional investors.” schwamborn

2018

2017

2018

“ETF adoption across Europe is set to accelerate thanks to innovation, favourable regulatory changes and the long-term benefits of low-cost investing in a low interest rate environment. European assets could double to reach €2trn by 2024. Actively-managed ETFs are expected to drive further ETF growth. While equity ETFs still dominate the market, bond ETFs and ESG-focused ETFs are also flourishing.” veeckmans

2016

What is your outlook for the ETF segment?

2015

veeckmans

2014

“Both are true. In the last decade, the vast majority of new investors’ money has flowed to ETFs and passive indexing.

$900bn

2013

Are ETFs helping to attract more investors to the funds market? Or is it simply existing investors adjusting their portfolios?

Chrystelle Veeckmans Partner KPMG Luxembourg

European ETFs Ireland and Luxembourg lead the European ETF market by a wide margin. Ireland is a particularly popular domicile for ETFs investing in US equities due to the favourable terms of the Irish-American double taxation treaty, according to Deborah Fuhr of ETFGI, a research and consulting firm.

1,700 1,600 1,500 1,400 1,300

1,100

1,000 900

↓

5. Marketing to millennials

800 700 600 500 400 300

100

2017

2016

0 2015

“Keep in mind that ‘millennial’ is a very broad definition in itself,” said Christophe → Braun, investment director at Capital

Source → ETFGI

200

2014

“ ETF adoption across Europe is set to accelerate.”

It’s hard to attend a fund industry conference these days without a panel or presentation dedicated to reaching millennials. Is this mostly marketing hype or a true transition? And what is a “millennial investor” anyway?

2013

MARCH/APRIL 2020

pressures, which are impacting both the fund industry in Luxembourg and other fund centres around the world. Despite this pressure, ETFs also represent an opportunity. Now, fund firms are turning towards new growth avenues such as alternative investments or impact funds which are offering higher fees (e.g., performance fees) in an attempt to relieve this pressure. Through its size, capabilities, global reach and adaptable framework, Luxembourg is well-positioned to master this challenge.”

Photo → KPMG Luxembourg

#LovingParents #ClingyParents #CantWaitToHaveMyOwnPlace #MyINGMortgage

For my mortgage, I prepared my move on the quiet and filled in my file online. A financial advisor then helped me to find the best solution. And tomorrowâ&#x20AC;ŚI sign ! #ByebyeDaddyMummy

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77% ESG factors

What millennial investors want Environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues were the “top priority when considering investment opportunities” in a global poll of millennials published by Devere Group, a financial consultancy.

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Source → Devere Group, 2 January 2020

2% Tactical allocation

4% Risk tolerance

7% Past performance

10% Anticipated returns

“Even if millennials haven’t been big buyers of funds products in the past, they most certainly will be in the future,” stated Braun. They are set to become the biggest set of investors possibly as soon as 10-20 years from now, said Sascha Werner, a director at Moventum Asset Management. Millennials are already influencing the investment industry. “They are socially-aware consumers and they care about the ‘bigger picture’ when investing,” said Braun. “They are looking for strong investment returns, but also want their underlying investments to be socially and environmentally responsible, with a long-term investment horizon.” Indeed, millennials are good news for the responsible investing sector, said Werner. “If there were no millennials, we would not be talking about ESG funds in the scope we are talking about ESG today. Global warming is a problem for all, but this generation drove this thing further,” he said. And “when today’s 20-year-olds are 40 and have children” they’ll be prime investors. Digital natives

But marketing to this generation will require transformation. “Millennials are the original digital natives,” according to Braun, “and when making a purchase or investment

they want to move seamlessly between phone, PC and tablet. That journey will more than likely start online, perhaps inspiration via an Instagram post, followed by research into the product and price. Fund firms need to ensure that they have a strong digital presence to be visible to millennials.” Should asset managers distribute funds via social media? “I personally think that will come,” Dirk Schulze, managing director of Aberdeen Standard Investments in Luxembourg, told Delano. Financial firms are already seeing increased competition from new players. He cited “an insurer [which is] coming [out] with a multiplatform banking app. So an insurer just grabbing business from the banking world. Of course, in asset management, it will be [someone else trying to grab] existing business,” which means there eventually might be “an Instagram asset management” offering on the market. “Maybe I just had an idea here,” he quipped. However, Schulze said he is not worried about the new entrants. “Because it would be another means of distributing... Because that could be the distribution side, but still you need the production side, the actual asset management. So it could also be complementary.” In addition, digital distribution is likely “to increase [millennials’] investment overall”.

executive vice president at the fund platform Moventum. “Other advisors have a more long-term view… millennials don’t earn them much money now,” but that will change as they grow older. She reckoned that most advisors will transition to a hybrid model, offering some digital tools and some value-added, and humandelivered, services. words

Aaron Grunwald

Photo → Aberdeen Standard Investments

Group. “How close does someone born in the US or Europe in 1981 feel to an Asian born in 1996? So, there is a certain risk of stereotyping people in that category of millennials. But to some extent, there are more similarities, as you might think, especially relative to the baby boomers or silent generation around the world.”

Dirk Schulze Managing director, Luxembourg Aberdeen Standard Investments

↓

Advisors in the middle

If this shift happens, current distribution partners could feel a squeeze. Some financial advisors are concerned about technology and “fear being replaced by robots eventually”, said Sabine Said,

“ Another means of distributing.”

Seated Dinners − a new format of exclusive evenings − feature an exceptional seated dinner and a thematic conference given by a recognised international expert, attended by key players in a particular sector. The first edition, held at the Athénée de Luxembourg’s main exam room, will draw nearly 200 players in the construction, real estate and architecture sectors, as well as political and institutional figures, for an inspiring and gastronomic conference dinner, followed by an afterdinner cocktail conducive to networking and conviviality.

T H U R S DAY

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REGISTRATION REQUIRED ON PAPERJAM.CLUB

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A GOOD PLATFORM Vivien Muller, Mu Design founder and CEO, shown here in his Belval office at the Technoport, which he says has been “a good platform” for exchange and discussion between his company and others facing similar challenges. ↳ www.mu-design.lu

MARCH/APRIL 2020 interview

Consumer electronics

Emotionally wired Mu Design’s vision is about more than cute gadgets: founder and CEO Vivien Muller hopes to develop a whole new branch of emotive, smarter objects. words photo

Natalie A. Gerhardstein Mike Zenari

t was a Kickstarter campaign that gave Mu Design the required capital for product launch. Founder and CEO Vivien Muller had built a prototype of Ulo, a smart surveillance camera resembling a tiny pet owl, able to interact with users through its expressive eyes. The campaign went viral, raising over €1.6m--well over its €200,000 goal. Ulo’s 40 expressions, which range from sleepy eyes when the battery is low to winking if it takes a snapshot, are designed “just to give a spark of life to the product,” says Muller. The industrial designer believes “cuteness hacks the brain. It triggers an

i nstinct to nurture. We are drawn to the cuteness of things, wired to [them].” 10,000 of the first-version Ulo cameras have since been sold. Muller estimates about one-third were used as baby monitoring cameras. “Kids love it and accept it,” he says, adding that the object is appealing because it can “interact with you instead of [being] a cold piece of technology.” The 3-strong startup will release an improved second version of Ulo by end-2020, and this year, it has been busy marketing its smart plant holder, Lua, or “last universal ancestor.” Through sensors, Lua gauges water, temperature and light, translating the plant’s needs into “emotions”: a vampire animation when there’s insufficient light, a thirsty face when the plant needs water. Users can select one plant from the 7,000 in the database and easily configure the plant holder through the generated QR code. The innovation received €240,000 in fundraising, with first units being deli vered to Indiegogo customers, although Muller hopes eventually both Ulo and Lua will be available for retail (he’s currently in talks with resellers and distributors). Muller incorporated the company in Luxembourg in 2015 for a “trivial” reason. He realised he couldn’t have the skyrocketing amount of funds in his personal bank account after his Kickstarter campaign took off. An accountant in France told Muller that creating a company in under a month there wouldn’t be possible--but in Luxembourg, it was. Nevertheless, Muller admits “Luxembourg was not the best place for us. For hardware companies, it’s complicated, but it’s even harder in Luxembourg.” Despite few consumer electronics companies on the B2C market, Mu Design has worked on projects for companies based here, in France and the US. Muller hopes to “develop a whole new branch of emotive, smart objects,” the next of which will hit the market this September. Stay tuned… ×

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← Chris Pinchen of The Privacy Agency

Spam in Luxembourgish

interview

Cybersecurity

What’s the worst that could happen to my data? Here are some of the disturbing examples of online privacy abuses that Chris Pinchen shared with us. words

rivacy consultant and digital literacy trainer Chris Pinchen knows plenty about the unsettling ways that our personal data could be (or is already being) exploited. While no precautions are foolproof, awareness might inform your online decisions. Dating & data

The number of couples meeting online has exploded. Today one in five couples meet through dating apps. If you have ever used a dating app, did you think what might happen to your personal information? “When people come to me and ask ‘why should I protect my data?’, I show them this site,” Pinchen says, bringing up the “Dating Brokers” investigation by the NGO Tactical Tech (tacticaltech.org). In 2017, two researchers purchased 1m dat-

Jess Bauldry

photo

Mike Zenari

ing profiles for $136 from a US company trading dating profiles from all over the world. The batch included 5m photos, usernames, email addresses, nationalities, gender, sexual preferences and other detailed personal information from people who had created profiles on dating websites. The purchase exposed a network of companies monetising this information without the conscious consent of users. Deepfakes

“Any technology can and will be used for bad purposes,” Pinchen says, and facial recognition is ripe for this. The worrying trend here, he says, is deepfakes, which put photos of a person through an algorithm and project their likeness onto the face of another person to create a fake video. “Deepfakes were developed for

porn, practically everything was developed for porn,” he explains. “You take a porn movie and a photo of Emma Watson, for example, and place her face on that of a porn star and then you’ve an Emma Watson porn movie.” The market has now evolved and this tool is increasingly being used in revenge porn situations, where disgruntled partners put their ex’s face in a porn film. Technology is so powerful today that these kinds of fake videos are being made through 3D graphics, making it harder to spot. It’s also possible to generate people’s voices. Site made Pinchen want to quit

Pinchen said he’s confronted with a lot of unpleasant uses of new technology and data in his research as an online privacy expert. He nearly quit last year, when he

Luxembourgers shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that just because their language isn’t widely spoken, that doesn’t mean it cannot be used against them. According to Pinchen, “spam in Luxembourgish is fantastic”. “Everyone says ‘this has to be real, no-one is going to send spam in Luxembourgish’.” It fools people because, as a written language, Luxembourgish is relatively young and so people may be less likely to suspect an email filled with orthographic errors to be a phishing attempt, for example.

2019/2020 outlook Daniel Eischen of the British Chamber of Commerce for Luxembourg and Claus Mansfeldt of the Luxembourg Private Equity & Venture Capital Association discussed Brexit, “substance”, Greta and Trump as Delano had a “look back at 2019 and look ahead to 2020”. More pictures online. ↳ www.delano.lu

1 Simon Ore and Anne-Sophie Pevergne 2 Chris Kibbey, Clayton Reed and Guillaume Bauer 3 Daniel Eischen and Claus Mansfeldt speak on the panel 4 Diana Trisca-Rusu 5 Jane Mottet-O’Brien and Loic Mottet 6 Carlo Klein, Thierry Leterre and Adrienne Leterre

Parents need to educate themselves

“The most important thing for kids on the internet is trust, if you destroy trust by spying on them, then you will never be able to have a conversation.” This is something he repeats over and over at parents’ evenings when confronted with adults wanting to install spyware on their children’s devices. But parental spying or imposing strict controls does not make young people safer, he says. If anything, it makes matters worse because young people are less likely to report bad things that happen online to parents or their school, “because they do not believe adults are capable of understanding what’s happening to them, they don’t believe that adults possess skills and knowledge to be able to help them in that situation”. For Pinchen, the key is to have a dialogue on internet safety. “You have to discuss with kids and this means you have to educate yourself.” × ↳ www.chrispinchen.ch

COMING UP Delano Live

Delano Breakfast talk

Organised by the Paperjam Club and sponsored by ING, Delano Live features live on-stage interviews with people and on topics covered by Delano magazine, but with a fresh perspective. That’s followed by an open bar and a bit of networking.

Catch the next breakfast:

Next up: Participatory sports

Win tickets for the Delano Live

Tuesday 12 May, 18:30 Knokke Out, Rives de Clausen

Tuesday 24 March, 08:15 Sofitel Le Grand Ducal

↳ www.delano.lu/agenda

Delano events

MARCH/APRIL 2020

encountered DeepMindy, the AI for porn search engine. This site enables people to take a portrait, either found online or simply a photo taken of a stranger in the street, and scan the internet for their likeness. The site will return pornographic content of people who resemble the person pictured. “When you find the face you want, you hit the ‘fap’ button, it takes you to the actual porn itself,” Pinchen explained. “I thought of all the great things you can do with technology, all the amazing things, and this is what you’re doing!”

DELANO LIVE

← Chris Pinchen of The Privacy Agency

Spam in Luxembourgish

interview

Cybersecurity

What’s the worst that could happen to my data? Here are some of the disturbing examples of online privacy abuses that Chris Pinchen shared with us. words

Jess Bauldry

photo

Mike Zenari

Pinchen said he’s confronted with a lot of unpleasant uses of new technology and data in his research as an online privacy expert. He nearly quit last year, when he

Parents need to educate themselves

COMING UP Delano Live

Delano Breakfast talk

Catch the next breakfast:

Next up: Participatory sports

Win tickets for the Delano Live

Tuesday 12 May, 18:30 Knokke Out, Rives de Clausen

Tuesday 24 March, 08:15 Sofitel Le Grand Ducal

↳ www.delano.lu/agenda

Delano events

MARCH/APRIL 2020

DELANO LIVE

Agenda

MARCH/APRIL 2020

British Chamber of Commerce

Game of Code

Brexit update

Hackathon

The UK ambassador to Luxembourg, John Marshall, provides a Brexit breakfast briefing to BCC sustaining members. Space is extremely limited.

Teams of 3-4 coders are challenged to develop a new digital product within 24 hours.

Here is a selection of 10 upcoming business, information and networking events for Luxembourg’s international community.

Friday 3 - Saturday 4 April Forum Campus Geesseknäppchen ↳ www.gameofcode.eu

British-Luxembourg Society

Lord Patten on Brexit

Thursday 19 March, 08:00-09:30 British embassy residence ↳ www.bcc.lu

Chris Patten--Oxford University chancellor, ex-EU commissioner and former Hong Kong governor--delivers the 2020 Sir Winston Churchill Lecture on “The challenges facing the EU and the UK”. Tuesday 28 April, 17:30 Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce British-Luxembourg Society List & FNR

University of Luxembourg

Open day Find out about the university’s bachelor and master programmes, research departments and take a tour of the campus. Saturday 21 March, 09:00-16:00 Belval campus ↳ www.uni.lu

So you think you’re green? Scientists discuss the impact of various forms of mobility and “how different solutions can contribute to the reduction of Luxembourg’s carbon footprint”. Thursday 9 April, 19:00 Cercle Cité Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology - LIST

ABBL & KPMG

Fintech speed dating Bankers and entrepreneurs meet to talk about opportunities created by the EU’s “open banking” rules. ABBL members and qualified fintech firms only. Thursday 26 March, 16:30-20:00 Come à la Maison ↳ www.abbl.lu

Luxembourg-Poland Chamber of Commerce

Monthly meetup Network with Poles in Luxembourg, who are active in fintech, space and other sectors. The official language of the LPCC is English.

Luxembourg’s keynote PE conference looks at “how BIG the sector is growing through Buyouts, Innovation and by generating Growth”. Speakers include Cornelia Gomez of PAI Partners. Tuesday 12 May, 09:00-20:00 Philharmonie ↳ www.lpea.lu

Thursday 23 April, 18:30 ↳ www.lpcc.lu

Architect at Work

Construction expo

Wednesday 22 - Thursday 23 April,

↳ www.delano.lu/agenda

LPEA Insights

The Foundry

Trade fair for architects, engineers, interior designers, and other product and service providers in the building industry.

Find more events Check Delano’s digital agenda for the latest happenings:

Luxembourg Private Equity and Venture Capital Association

13:00-20:00 Luxexpo Architect at Work

Paperjam Club

Hiring non-EU nationals Bénédicte Souy of Moving People 2 Luxembourg holds a workshop on the recruitment of non-European employees, from obtaining work permits to managing cultural diversity. Tuesday 12 May, 14:00-17:15 Chamber of Employees ↳ club.paperjam.lu

Photos → Matic Zorman (archives) → Lala La Photo (archives) → Vlad Tchompalov/Unsplash → Eric Dalele Photography/Unsplash → Salzburg Global Seminar/Rebecca Rayne → Maison Moderne (archives)

BRAND VOICE

Your motto is “Where design meets craftsmanship”--where does this idea come from?

Interior design

my mother Doris as decorator, my sister Tammy as business manager, and my sister Anne and I as interior designers. Being a family business is extremely valuable to us as it allows us to work hand in hand, always keeping on top of what’s happening. Our approach is very personal, which in turn is what our clients appreciate.

Photos → Maison Lucien Schweitzer

The painting business lies at the heart of Maison Lucien Schweitzer. It’s where the origins of our firm are, so we still define ourselves through this background in craftsmanship. When my sisters and I joined over ten years ago, we developed the design and bespoke side of our business without losing touch with our roots. We’ve been cultivating artisanal savoir-faire for more than four decades, not knowing any boundaries between the various services we offer. How is Maison Lucien Schweitzer going to continue evolving?

Interior design

Tailor-made design Combining craftsmanship, decoration and interior design, Maison Lucien Schweitzer brings 40 years of design excellence to clients in Luxembourg and beyond. We caught up with the founder’s daughter Isabelle Schweitzer about heritage and future goals.

We want to keep doing what we do, improving our services all the time to offer a quality product that’s unique to Luxembourg--whether it’s the brands that we stock, the concepts that we develop or the savoir-faire that we share. There aren’t many other places in Luxembourg where so many craftspeople, including painters, upholsterers and designers, are working together under one roof. Over the years, Maison Lucien Schweitzer has become a respected brand that epitomises quality, artisanal know-how and design--looking back at what we have achieved in the past 40 years, the possibili× ties for the future are endless.

How did Maison Lucien Schweitzer get to where it is today?

isabelle schweitzer My father founded Maison Lucien Schweitzer 40 years ago as a traditional painting business, and over the years, the firm has turned into a one-stop address for interior design. From initial idea through to completion, we now provide a full 360-degree service, following our clients at all stages of their interior design project. We approach each project from an aesthetic and functional point of view to come up with bespoke solutions that truly fit the needs of our clients.

What’s the value of keeping it in the family?