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Hans Schnabel works for the City Marketing and Trade Promotion Department in Schweinfurt,

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Germany.

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For many years, the city was the center of Europe's ball bearing industry.

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This is a part of the city of Schweinfurt.

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The city has a very big crisis in the year 1992.

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We lost 10,000 jobs in our factories, in the ball bearing factories and in other factories.

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In the same year, the people elected a new mayor, Mrs. Grieser, and Mrs. Grieser said

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always in every crisis, you can find also a change.

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And so we like to use the changes in the last 15 years.

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However, at the start of the 1990s, Europe went into a recession, which decreased production

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in the automobile industry, badly affecting the manufacturers of ball bearings.

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So what you can see here is the western part of the city of Schweinfurt, where the bearing

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industry is based.

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In Schweinfurt, where we have very much concentrated the bearing industry, we had a loss of employment

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of about 30 to 40 percent.

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The loss of 10,000 jobs led to a vigorous response on the part of the city.

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The face of the city has changed in two ways.

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What you can see by the first view, you can see a lot of new buildings like a museum,

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like a library, like new shopping centers or like a conference center.

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But the buildings are not the main thing.

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The main thing are the jobs in the buildings, a lot of jobs in services.

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In the last 15 years or so, we create 7,000 new jobs in services.

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And one of the most important projects is the conference center.

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The conference center was the first step to move into the service jobs.

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We had no conference facilities like this in Schweinfurt.

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And our companies, when they made conferences, they had to go in other cities far from here.

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So we decided to build this conference center connected with the hotel.

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We had a budget from 12 million Euro for this project and we get 50 percent from the EC

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for this project.

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And totally, we create 120 new jobs by the conference center, by the hotel and by the

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services around this project.

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Morgen um 15 Uhr?

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Gerne.

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Wiederhören.

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So, you see in here the bookings for the following month.

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We had approximately 12 conferences for the last three months.

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In just three months, the new conference center had already played host to over 6,000 delegates.

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The building was opened in the year 2002.

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We increased the overnights in Schweinfurt per year from 100,000 overnights up to 140,000

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overnights.

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And this conference center was also a good opportunity to increase jobs and employments.

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Attached to the conference center is a hotel, built with private funding and providing a

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clear demonstration of the role model played by this center, where dozens of new jobs have

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been created.

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But the city's transformation doesn't stop here.

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A new cultural center is under construction in the city center.

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Here we are on a very special place.

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It is the center of the city and you can see three new buildings.

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They make a new face for the city.

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One of the buildings is the museum, the library and behind us we have a new building for a

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federal customer service.

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The service industry has also made inroads into the outlying districts where a call center

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has been built.

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Sabine Lombardi used to work in the ball bearing industry.

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As a result of the crisis in this sector, she lost her job in the 1990s.

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At first I thought it would be impossible to find a new job here in Schweinfurt but

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then I had this big chance to work here at the call center and it gave me a big responsibility

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and a big chance to work over here now.

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In a study by the Swiss Research Institute Prognos, Schweinfurt was named the most dynamic

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city in Germany.

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This level of excellence could not have been achieved without assistance from the European

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Regional Development Fund.

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When we look over the last 12 years, we made 8 or 10 projects with money from the EC and

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the budget for all these projects I think was approximately 40 or 45 million Euro and

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we get normally 50% for the projects from the EC so that we have 20, 22, 23 millions

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from the structure fund from the European Union.

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Schweinfurt is now one of the few European cities that can pride itself on being able

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to offer as many jobs as it has residents, which is 55,000.

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In less than 15 years, the city has achieved a remarkable turnaround.