Emmen is a village and municipality in the district of Hochdorf in the canton of Lucerne in Switzerland. The municipality Emmen consists of the village Emmen, the town Emmenbrücke, and several hamlets.
History
Emmen is first mentioned in 840 as Emau in a document of King Lothair I of Bavaria. For centuries the region was ruled by the Murbach Abbey in Vosges. In 1291 the municipality came under Habsburg rule. After the Battle of Sempach in 1386 the Habsburg's lost Emmen and it became part of the Canton of Lucerne. Emmen also took part in the Swiss peasant war of 1653.
Since 1803, Emmen is part of the Hochdorf District and is its most populous municipality.
In 2008, the municipality of Emmen as well as Adligenswil, Ebikon, Horw and Kriens participated in the «Starke Stadtregion Luzern» project. In it, the merger of individual or several municipalities with the city of Lucerne was examined. In 2011, the merger was proposed by the project management as the most suitable means for the further development of the region around Lucerne. However, the voters of the municipality of Emmen rejected such a proposal in 2012 - as did voters in Adligenswil, Ebikon and Kriens. That meant that Emmen remained an independent municipality. As a result, Thomas Willi who was the president of the municipality at the time and strongly advocated for a merger resigned.
Politics
As every Swiss municipality Emmen has a legislative and executive body, the Einwohnerrat and the Gemeinderat.
Einwohnerrat (legislative) The Einwohnerrat has 40 members who are elected every four years.
Gemeinderat (executive) The five-member Gemeinderat is the executive body. Each of them heads a directorate. In the legislative period 2020–2024, it consists of:
Ramona Gut-Rogger FDP, Gemeindepräsidentin; Directorate of Security and Sport
Patrick Schnellmann Die Mitte, Directorate of Finance and Human Resources
Thomas Lehmann FDP, Directorate of Social Affairs and Society
Josef Schmidli Die Mitte, Directorate for Construction and Environment
Brahim Aakti SP, Directorate of School and Culture
Elections
Cantonal Council elections
In the 2019 Cantonal Council elections in the Canton of Lucerne, the voter percentages in Emmen were: FDP 23.5%, SVP 22.0%, CVP 19.6%, SP 16.7%, GPS 13.4%, glp 5.1%.
Swiss federal elections
In the 2019 Swiss federal elections, the voter percentages in Emmen were: SVP 30.5%, SP 18.4%, CVP 16.4%, FDP 14.9%, GPS 12.4%, glp 6.0%, EVP 1.0%.
Geography
Emmen has an area of . Of this area, 46.6% is used for agricultural purposes, while 18.2% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 33.3% is settled (buildings or roads) and the remainder (1.9%) is non-productive (rivers, glaciers or mountains). , 18.19% of the total land area was forested. Of the agricultural land, 44.69% is used for farming or pastures, while 1.92% is used for orchards or vine crops. Of the settled areas, 14.55% is covered with buildings, 5.7% is industrial, 1.62% is classed as special developments, 1.97% is parks or greenbelts and 9.49% is transportation infrastructure. Of the unproductive areas, 0.25% is unproductive standing water (ponds or lakes), and the other 1.62% is unproductive flowing water (rivers).
The municipality is part of the metropolitan area of Lucerne. It is located at the confluence of the Kleine Emme into the Reuss.
The naturalization law
The municipality 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 obtaining 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. Emmen has since returned to the previous system of naturalization committees.