Employment figures which show 400,000 refugees are in work or training vindicate Angela Merkel’s approach to integration, the head of the German Employers’ Federation (BDA) has claimed. 

Ingo Kramer said Ms Merkel’s policy of allowing over a million refugees into the country had benefited the country’s businesses. 

“Yes, ‘we are doing it’ with integration,” Mr Kramer told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper.

“Of more than one million people who have come to Germany since 2015, almost 400,000 have an apprenticeship or job.” he added.  

The BDA head said the speed with which refugees had found work had surprised him.

“Most young migrants can speak German so well after one year of instruction that they can participate in vocational school lessons,” he said, adding: "Our companies are making this happen.”

“Above all, the medium-sized firms are looking for [refugees as] employees.”

Alexander Gauland, leader of the populist AfD, responded by accusing Mr Kramer of ‘living on another planet’.

“German citizens are confronted on a daily basis with the consequences of the irresponsible policy of open borders: growing housing shortages, rising rents and a never-ending series of terrible assaults,” the AfD head claimed.

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Employment experts have also shown more caution. Acknowledging the fact that 600,000 refugees are reliant on social security payments, Thomas Liebig a migration expert at the OECD, told a radio station in August that “their way into the job market is long – we shouldn’t have any illusions about that.”

The ‘open-door’ policy caused much controversy when Ms Merkel announced it in 2015 with the words “we can do it”.

The phrase quickly turned into a worldwide rallying call for the refugee crisis, as the country opened its door to refugees mostly from Syria and Afghanistan. 

Local communities soon struggled under the financial strain of providing housing and schools to refugee families, and domestic opponents accused Ms Merkel of indulging in lofty rhetoric while leaving local authorities in the lurch. 

As public skepticism grew ahead of last year’s election, Ms Merkel promised to stop using the phrase all together.

 

Maurin Pisani picked the last of this year’s jasmine flowers and held it to his nose, breathing in the delicate perfume. Behind him the Maritime Alps, beneath, the hills of Grasse rolling to the sea.

“Their smell changes all the time because they are alive. Sometimes of mango, apricot and banana, sometimes almonds and coconut, and when they start to wilt, the animal odour of indole,” said the 34-year-old.

“You mean cat pee,” responded his partner Anne Caluzio, 32, with a laugh.

Joking apart, the couple are living proof that flower power is finally returning to the French Riviera town famed for its scent. 

The pair started planting jasmine grandiflorum – a key ingredient in top French perfumes like J’adore L’Or or Chanel number 5 – in their farm in June. It is back-breaking work as every tiny flower has to be harvested by hand over a three-month period.

But if all goes to plan, within four to five years, they will be the second biggest producers of the prized white flower in France.

After decades in the doldrums, Grasse is in the midst of a perfume renaissance, which culminated last month with it being crowned by UNESCO as a world “intangible cultural heritage” treasure.

Central to that rebirth has been a revival in the local production of its famed roses, jasmine and tuberose, among others.

Grasse has been renowned as the world’s perfume capital since the 16th century, when scent was used to hide the awful odours from its burgeoning tannery industry and to produce fragrant gloves for the King.

While it continued to live off its name, globalisation and the rise of cheaper alternatives in countries like India and Tunisia killed off Grasse’s flower production in recent decades.

Meanwhile, sky-high land prices on the Côte d’Azur spurred many farmers to sell their land. The fields around here were covered with 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) of flowers at the start of the 20th century. Today only around 40 hectares remain.

But a small band of tenacious growers refused to give up.

Among them was Armelle Janody, 49, a former French teacher, who with her partner and sound engineer Rémy Foltête, 58, and their children ditched everything to become rose farmers seven years ago.

Locals, many of whom used to be in the flower trade before it dried up in the 1980s, looked askance when she started planting the region’s famous rose centifolia.

“The old-timers really suffered from the decline. One day, my neighbour found no more flower pickers for his jasmine fields and ripped them all up in anger,” she said while pruning roses.

“So when I arrived, he said who does she think she is? Everyone bet on us dying within two years,” she recalled.

Members of her Fleurs d’Exception du Pays de Grasse association, which represents local growers, managed to reverse the decline by changing business model. 

In the past, they were at the mercy of local industrial firms that processed the flowers to extract their scent. When these increasingly turned to synthetic aromas, demand plummeted, so the growers decided to approach France’s top perfumers directly. 

“It worked because a return to natural raw materials was in fashion,” she said.

Today, Ms Janody and most flower producers have signed exclusive contracts with giant luxury groups like Chanel and more recently LVMH, which owns Dior and Louis Vuitton and bought a chateau in the area in 2016. 

Given the small quantities produced, local independent perfumers complain they have been all but shut out of the market.

“Grasse has to be careful to not let the bigger forces continue to control flower production even if it is thanks to them that that new producers are starting up,” said Jessica Buchanan, a Canadian perfumer based in central Grasse.

But this may change. With demand rising, local authorities last month ring-fenced a further 70 hectares of local land for flower producers. Mr Pisani’s estate, for example, was saved from the clutches of a real estate agency.

That initiative was backed by senator and ex-mayor Jean-Pierre Leleux, who also spearheaded Grasse’s UNESCO bid.

He said the new UN status would help preserve Grasse’s savoir-faire that “could be lost if we don’t organise ways of passing it on to future generations”. For example, the area only has a handful of individuals who know how to graft Grasse roses and one remaining glass blower for old-style bottles.

UNESCO recognises what Mr Leleux calls the “holy trinity” of Grasse, which comprises not just the cultivation of perfume plants but also the knowledge and processing of natural raw materials, and the art of creating a perfume.

Some of the town’s companies are world leaders in extracting fragrance from raw materials using a range of methods and age-old know-how. One, Robertet, has just reintroduced an ancient technique of "enfleurage" whereby individual flowers are placed on fat, which absorbs their smell.  

Grasse is also famed for its “nez”, among them Fabrice Pellegrin, 50, a “scent composer” whose father was a perfumer and mother a jasmine picker. Whereas the untrained nose can discern only around 15 smells, he can single out up to 4,000.

Grasse, he said, had long thrived by jealously guarding its perfume secrets, only passing them down inside family-run businesses. “For example, for months I tried to reproduce the scent of a fresh Grasse jasmine flower,” he said.

“My father told me: ’It’s good but if you want it to smell natural, add basil.’ I took his advice. He was right.”

Worried such elders would take their secrets to the grave, he helped open this year the first comprehensive perfume school in Grasse, the Ecole Supérieur du Parfum, covering everything from olfaction to sourcing and marketing. His son is a student.

There was nowhere better to learn than Grasse, he said.  “We’re lucky to be squeezed between the mountains and the sea with a unique microclimate perfect for perfume flowers,” he said. They may be dozens of times more expensive than their foreign rivals, but they were unique, he said.

“You can plant the same botanic species here, in India, Morocco and Egypt. They will all have different smells but the most beautiful, rich and noble will be those from Grasse,” he said.

Back in their field, Maurin Pisani and Anne Caluzio started placing white veils over their prized jasmine shrubs to stop them freezing in winter.

“We have arrived at a time of a renaissance and feel very lucky,” said Mr Pisani.

“There is more land up for grabs and more and more candidates to be flower growers,” said Ms Caluzio. “This is just the beginning.”

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Welcome to our index page of the 2020 Styrian Grand Prix. From here you will be able to find links to all our latest reports, pictures and results from the Red Bull Ring, Spielberg

Session Reports

FP1: Perez sets the pace in Styrian GP first practice

FP2: Verstappen edges Bottas as Hamilton struggles in second practice

FP3: Heavy rain wreaks havoc on Saturday running in Spielberg

Qualifying: Hamilton surges to the top in rain-hit Styria

Race: Hamilton cruises to Styrian GP win after Ferrari disaster

Photos

Gallery: All the pictures from Thursday’s build-up in the Red Bull Ring, Spielberg

Gallery: All the pictures from practice day in the Red Bull Ring, Spielberg

Gallery: All the pictures from qualifying day in the Red Bull Ring, Spielberg

Gallery: All the pictures from race day in the Red Bull Ring, Spielberg

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Results
Free Practice 1 results

Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps

1
Sergio Pérez
Racing Point
1:04.867s

32

2
Max Verstappen
Red Bull
1:04.963s
+ 0.096s
31

3
Valtteri Bottas
Mercedes
1:05.089s
+ 0.222s
31

4
Lewis Hamilton
Mercedes
1:05.120s
+ 0.253s
29

5
Lance Stroll
Racing Point
1:05.396s
+ 0.529s
36

6
Alexander Albon
Red Bull
1:05.483s
+ 0.616s
28

7
Carlos Sainz
McLaren
1:05.602s
+ 0.735s
40

8
Pierre Gasly
AlphaTauri
1:05.698s
+ 0.831s
27

9
Daniel Ricciardo
Renault
1:05.769s
+ 0.902s
31

10
Sebastian Vettel
Ferrari
1:05.770s
+ 0.903s
25

11
Daniil Kvyat
AlphaTauri
1:05.815s
+ 0.948s
28

12
Charles Leclerc
Ferrari
1:05.837s
+ 0.970s
28

13
Esteban Ocon
Renault
1:05.874s
+ 1.007s
35

14
Lando Norris
McLaren
1:05.908s
+ 1.041s
25

15
Kimi Räikkönen
Alfa Romeo
1:06.441s
+ 1.574s
23

16
Romain Grosjean
Haas
1:06.446s
+ 1.579s
31

17
Jack Aitken
Williams
1:06.768s
+ 1.901s
35

18
Robert Kubica
Alfa Romeo
1:06.797s
+ 1.930s
31

19
Nicholas Latifi
Williams
1:09.598s
+ 4.731s
6

20
Kevin Magnussen
Haas

3

Free Practice 2 results

Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps

1
Max Verstappen
Red Bull
1:03.660s

27

2
Valtteri Bottas
Mercedes
1:03.703s
+ 0.043s
35

3
Sergio Pérez
Racing Point
1:03.877s
+ 0.217s
43

4
Lance Stroll
Racing Point
1:04.241s
+ 0.581s
43

5
Carlos Sainz
McLaren
1:04.333s
+ 0.673s
44

6
Lewis Hamilton
Mercedes
1:04.348s
+ 0.688s
26

7
Alexander Albon
Red Bull
1:04.437s
+ 0.777s
28

8
Lando Norris
McLaren
1:04.541s
+ 0.881s
30

9
Charles Leclerc
Ferrari
1:04.706s
+ 1.046s
34

10
Esteban Ocon
Renault
1:04.746s
+ 1.086s
32

11
Pierre Gasly
AlphaTauri
1:04.757s
+ 1.097s
36

12
Daniil Kvyat
AlphaTauri
1:05.050s
+ 1.390s
33

13
Kimi Räikkönen
Alfa Romeo
1:05.152s
+ 1.492s
23

14
Antonio Giovinazzi
Alfa Romeo
1:05.365s
+ 1.705s
35

15
George Russell
Williams
1:05.588s
+ 1.928s
33

16
Sebastian Vettel
Ferrari
1:05.613s
+ 1.953s
39

17
Nicholas Latifi
Williams
1:05.655s
+ 1.995s
48

18
Kevin Magnussen
Haas
1:05.790s
+ 2.130s
36

19
Romain Grosjean
Haas
1:06.096s
+ 2.436s
37

20
Daniel Ricciardo
Renault

2

Free Practice 3 results

No running due to inclement weather

Qualifying results

Pos Driver Team Q1 Q2 Q3

1
Lewis Hamilton
Mercedes
1:18.188s
1:17.825s
1:19.273s

2
Max Verstappen
Red Bull
1:18.297s
1:17.938s
1:20.489s

3
Carlos Sainz
McLaren
1:18.590s
1:18.836s
1:20.671s

4
Valtteri Bottas
Mercedes
1:18.791s
1:18.657s
1:20.701s

5
Esteban Ocon
Renault
1:19.687s
1:18.764s
1:20.922s

6
Lando Norris
McLaren
1:18.504s
1:18.448s
1:20.925s

7
Alexander Albon
Red Bull
1:20.882s
1:19.014s
1:21.011s

8
Pierre Gasly
AlphaTauri
1:20.192s
1:18.744s
1:21.028s

9
Daniel Ricciardo
Renault
1:19.662s
1:19.229s
1:21.192s

10
Sebastian Vettel
Ferrari
1:20.243s
1:19.545s
1:21.651s

11
Charles Leclerc
Ferrari
1:20.871s
1:19.628s

12
George Russell
Williams
1:20.382s
1:19.636s

13
Lance Stroll
Racing Point
1:19.697s
1:19.645s

14
Daniil Kvyat
AlphaTauri
1:19.824s
1:19.717s

15
Kevin Magnussen
Haas
1:21.140s
1:20.211s

16
Kimi Räikkönen
Alfa Romeo
1:21.372s

17
Sergio Pérez
Racing Point
1:21.607s

18
Nicholas Latifi
Williams
1:21.759s

19
Antonio Giovinazzi
Alfa Romeo
1:21.831s

20
Romain Grosjean
Haas

Race results

Pos Driver Team Gap Stops

1
Lewis Hamilton
Mercedes
71 laps – 1:22:50.683s
1

2
Valtteri Bottas
Mercedes
+ 13.719s
1

3
Max Verstappen
Red Bull
+ 33.698s
2

4
Alexander Albon
Red Bull
+ 44.400s
1

5
Lando Norris
McLaren
+ 61.470s
1

6
Sergio Pérez
Racing Point
+ 62.387s
1

7
Lance Stroll
Racing Point
+ 62.453s
1

8
Daniel Ricciardo
Renault
+ 62.591s
1

9
Carlos Sainz
McLaren
+ 1 lap
2

10
Daniil Kvyat
AlphaTauri
+ 1 lap
1

11
Kimi Räikkönen
Alfa Romeo
+ 1 lap
1

12
Kevin Magnussen
Haas
+ 1 lap
1

13
Romain Grosjean
Haas
+ 1 lap
1

14
Antonio Giovinazzi
Alfa Romeo
+ 1 lap
1

15
Pierre Gasly
AlphaTauri
+ 1 lap
2

16
George Russell
Williams
+ 2 laps
1

17
Nicholas Latifi
Williams
+ 2 laps
1

18
Esteban Ocon
Renault
DNF
1

19
Charles Leclerc
Ferrari
DNF
2

20
Sebastian Vettel
Ferrari
DNF
1

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The Cleveland Browns seem to have a lion’s share of the fans with the ranks of the WWE Superstars. Along with very vocal Cleveland fans Mike “The Miz” Mizanin and Dolph Ziggler, the Browns had some additional NXT Superstars show their support on Sunday. Apparently, Ethan Carter III, Johnny Gargano and Candice LaRae are Browns fans and were on hand to watch Cleveland defeat the Cincinnati Bengals, 26-18. Here are pics of the gathering of NXT Browns fans and one of Ziggler with a big Bernie Kosar bobblehead: 

Final #Browns home game of the season and the @WWE was well represented by Clevelanders! Thanks to the @Browns for the hospitality! pic.twitter.com/2K9UB9TQMQ
— Vic Joseph (@VicJosephWWE) December 23, 2018

MET BERNIE AT THE #Cleveland GAME TODAY @BernieSanders #CLEVSCIN @Browns #HereWeGoBronies @BernieKosarQB pic.twitter.com/eFisqmK2Ta
— Dolph Ziggler (@HEELZiggler) December 23, 2018