Europe

Switzerland held its position as the No. 1 country in the world, according to the 2018 Best Countries report, a rankings and analysis project by U.S. News & World Report, Y&R’s BAV Group and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In its third year, the rankings evaluate 80 countries across a range of criteria, from economic influence and power to citizenship and quality of life, to capture how nations are perceived on a global scale.

It is politically impossible for neutral Switzerland to sign in the foreseeable future a new treaty binding it closer to the European Union despite pressure from Brussels, Finance Minister Ueli Maurer said in a newspaper interview.

Maurer told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper on Friday that he didn’t think a new EU framework treaty was possible soon. “If we try it nonetheless, both sides will be under pressure and this will not lead to good negotiating results,” he said.

Brussels, Belgium – Euronext Brussels awarded the best performing listed companies and its’ members during the New Year’s reception. The Small, Medium and Large cap winners are: Deceuninck (DECB), argenx (ARGX), Umicore (UMI). The past year 2017 was a rather special year for the Exchange as it was able to reach the historical record in number of transactions.

For the first time in half a century, Sweden is seriously prepping its country for the possibility of war. Growing national anxiety over the threat of Russia has led the government to send out 4.7m information pamphlets to all households informing them of what to do in the event of war. "All of society needs to be prepared for conflict, not just the military. We haven’t been using words such as total defence or high alert for 25-30 years or more. So the knowledge among citizens is very low", says the government.

George Soros has lamented that the European Union is on the verge of collapse while Russia is becoming “a resurgent nationalist power.”
Hungarian-American tycoon George Soros, who runs the $26 billion Soros Fund Management and chairs the global board of the Open Society Foundations (OSF), made the remarks while speaking to the Financial Times.

Fewer people migrated to Switzerland last year than at any point in the past ten years and the number of arrivals from the European Union plunged last year, the Swiss media reported Monday.

The number of European Union workers arriving in Switzerland halved last year from a peak in 2013 and net immigration from EU states stood at 30,799 in 2017, Swissinfo said, quoting the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper.

Last week the government published the full list of people who were granted Maltese citizenship during 2016, including those who had purchased their citizenship through the Individual Investor Programme (IIP).
Under the IIP, high-net worth individuals can obtain Maltese, and therefore EU citizenship, against a fee of €650,000, as well as €150,000 in government bonds and a €350,000 investment in property. A physical presence is not required for applicants to prove residency.

Iceland has become the first country in the world to legalize equal pay for men and women; the legislation on its first day of 2018 passed a new law making it illegal to pay men more than women.

According to the law passed on Monday, companies and government agencies employing at least 25 people will have to obtain government certification of their equal-pay policies.