Clement files vaccine complaint with prosecutor

Pirate party MP Sven Clement on 8 March filed a letter with Luxembourg’s public prosecutor, saying that hospital board members skipping the vaccine queue could constitute an offence. The public prosecutor confirmed to Radio 100,7 that it had received the letter and was now analysing it. Board members of the Robert Schuman Hospitals group were vaccinated early but said rules at the start of January on their status as hospital staff hadn’t been clear. Henri Grethen, president of the Luxembourg City hospices, received the vaccine in February. The Centre hospitalier du Nord (CHdN) has launched an independent investigation to ensure internal procedures were compliant with the vaccine strategy.

Gathering data for gender equality

The government on Tuesday launched a new monitoring body for gender equality, which will gather data to support decision-making and not-for-profits working in these domains. The Observatoire de l’égalité aims to provide a better understanding of gender equality in the grand duchy in areas including domestic violence, jobs, leadership, work-life balance, education, income and health. “Gender-specific data is extremely important for gender policy,” said Taina Bofferding, minister for equality between women and men, at the launch. “We need as complete a picture as possible,” she said about inequalities in Luxembourg. “They’re not just numbers, but there are people behind them and realities.”

Next step for bill on press aid  

The long road ahead of bill 7631 continues but an important step was taken on Tuesday as members of the committee on digitisation, media and communications, completed their examination of the text and adopted some 20 amendments. Among these, MPs suggested abolishing a provision requiring the appointment of an editor-in-chief in order to apply for state aid. The bill would introduce three types of publishers: the eligible publisher, the emerging publisher, and the citizen publisher. The amount of aid each type of publisher will be able to receive will depend on a number of different criteria. As a reminder, this reform plans to no longer adapt the assistance provided according to the number of pages published, but rather the number of professional journalists employed. The various amendments will now be submitted to the council of state for further opinion.

Pandemic innovation

Whatsapp, Airbnb and Uber were all developed or launched in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, showing how innovative startups can emerge from economic crises. The early signs are looking promising for Luxembourg’s startup scene at least in terms of the volume of people catching the entrepreneurial bug. “We got more requests in 2020 from people willing to launch their business than in 2019,” Lucile Barberet, CEO of startup support platform Nyuko, told Delano. Even if they were only from “very early-stage entrepreneurs” interested in established “one-person companies”, Barberet says it shows people have used this extraordinary time to “reflect on their professional path and felt the urge to change it.”

A similar trend was noted across several support structures for startups and entrepreneurs in Luxembourg. The University of Luxembourg Incubator, which in recent years nurtured successful projects Magrid and Food4All, received 17 new startups. “It was a phenomenal number as we’ve only been around for three years and currently have 35 active startups either hosted within the University of Luxembourg Incubator itself or going through its Venture Mentoring Service,” said incubator coordinator Ielizaveta Shliakhova. The Luxembourg House of Startups (Host) observed a surge in interest from people in the “cautious early implementation approach.” Meanwhile, Luxinnovation saw participation in its Fit4Start startup programme almost double, from 476 in a single edition in 2020, compared to 512 in two editions in 2019. 

Dating in a jam

The pandemic may have put dating in the slowlane but it need not take a backseat, at least not for users of a new app being described as Tinder for traffic jams. Carimmat, which launched in France in 2019 and has been available globally, including in Luxembourg since the start of 2021, enables people to connect with drivers of other vehicles based on their number plate. Assuming the motorist also has an account, they can make contact and send messages. A Carimmat spokesperson told Delano: “Since January 2021, the application has been available worldwide in English, French and Spanish and it is capable of recognising any number plate in the world.”

There are no fees to use the application, and users decide how much or how little data they wish to share publicly. The pandemic has placed a lot of conventional meeting places for singles out of bounds, leading to a surge in online dating apps. Female-led dating app Bumble, saw its market value soar to $13bn in February after listing shares. According to App Annie, a mobile data and analytics company, consumers spent over $3 billion on dating apps in 2020, up 15% globally compared to the year before, with some 560 million dating apps downloaded. 

Technical issues on Delano website 

Dear readers, you may have noticed that our noon briefing looks a little different today. This is due to some technical issues this morning, meaning that our website is currently unavailable. We are working with our external providers to fix the problem and hope to be back online very soon. Thank you for your patience. 

Today's noon briefing was written by Cordula Schnuer, Lynn Feith and Jess Bauldry.