Emmen, Switzerland

Infobox Swiss town
subject_name = Emmen
municipality_name = Emmen
municipality_type = city
imagepath_coa = Pic_Emmen.png|pixel_coa=

languages = German
canton = Lucerne
iso-code-region = CH-LU
district = Hochdorf
lat_d=47|lat_m=05|lat_NS=N|long_d=8|long_m=18|long_EW=E
postal_code = 6032
municipality_code = 1024
area = 20.37
elevation = 427|elevation_description=
population = 27274|populationof = December 2005 | popofyear = 2005
website = www.emmen.ch
mayor = |mayor_asof=|mayor_party=
mayor_title = |list_of_mayors =
places = Emmen-Dorf, Emmenbrücke
demonym =
neighboring_municipalities= Buchrain, Ebikon, Eschenbach, Littau , Lucerne , Neuenkirch, Rothenburg
twintowns = |

Emmen is a municipality in the district of Hochdorf in the canton of Lucerne in Switzerland.

It is part of the metropolitan area of Lucerne. The municipality also includes Emmenbrücke.

The main industry is the Steel-Industrie, EMMI (Switzerland's biggest Cheese-Corporation) as well as a division of Ruag, the Swiss Army supplier. There is the so called ´golden triangle´ of the sewage plant, the air force base and the waste incinerating plant.

The naturalization law

The city of Emmen hit international headlines in 2001 when it announced new naturalization law. While there are some fixed requirements for obtaining Swiss citizenship by naturalization set at the federal level, such as the requirement to live and work for 12 years and speak the local language, Swiss cantons and communities are free to introduce more stringent requirements. Until 2001, naturalization was run by a popularly elected committee. But Emmen decided to have the citizens themselves run the nationalization process, requiring that potential citizens pass a series of tests and public interviews and subjecting citizenship applications to the public vote.

This process prevented many Yugoslavs-Swiss people, the largest ethnic group among citizenship candidates (Emmen has one of the largest of ex-Yugoslav community in Switzerland), from getting the citizenship. Human rights campaigners said that the public interviews and voting were degrading. In July 2003, the practice was ruled discriminatory and unconstitutional by the Supreme Court [http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=4021512] . Emmen has since returned to the previous system of naturalization committees.

Population by nationality

External links

* [http://www.emmen.ch Official Website]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/1378320.stm BBC report on the Emmen citizenship tests]
*HDS|595|Emmen
*HDS|9316|Emmenbrücke