Euskirchen

Euskirchen is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, capital of the district Euskirchen. While Euskirchen resembles a modern shopping town, it also has a history dating back over 700 years, having been granted town-status in 1302. As of December 2007, it had a population of 55,446.

Culture

Parts of the ancient town wall, and three of its defensive towers, are still standing. Tourists are also attracted by Euskirchen due to the proximity of two large cities, Cologne and Bonn, to the North-East, and the hills of the Eifel region to the South. It is also the birthplace of Emil Fischer, born 1852, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1902. The local theatre in The Emil Fischer Gymnasium offers a wide variety of cultural events. In addition to that The City Forum and the Parkhotel Euskirchen *[1] contribute to the cultural offerings.

The etymology of the word Euskirchen: Euskirchen means Kirche auf der Aue, Church on riverside lowland. The Martinskirche is the oldest church in Euskirchen.

Twinnings

Euskirchen is twinned with the following towns:

• Basingstoke, United Kingdom, since 1986
• Charleville-Mézières, France, since 1964
• Kutztown, USA, since 2004

Industry and Commerce

Euskirchen has a diversified and balanced economic structure and can therefore provide jobs for a large catchment area. Euskirchen is a rural town with large, open fields serving agricultural purposes and thus as farming land for the many farmers from Euskirchen and surroundings for growing sugar beet. Euskirchen has been home to a sugar factory since 1879. Until a few decades ago, a further important branch of industry here was cloth manufacturing, but this was unable to survive due to competition from large international corporations.

Well-known industrial enterprises (e.g. Proctor & Gamble, Miele) have located at the town's industrial and commercial sites. These can also offer attractive possibilities to new enterprises. The central location of the town and the good road and rail links to the international transport network are important factors in this context.

The two largest industrial and commercial sites in Euskirchen with a total of 21,000 jobs are:

• IPAS (“Industriepark am Silberberg”) with four million m², of which 3.6 m² million lie within the boundary of the town of Euskirchen ^[2]
• EURO-Park (located between Euskirchen and Roitzheim) with 1.5 million m². ^[3]

At IPAS, in the districts Wüschheim/Großbüllesheim, the consumer goods corporation Procter & Gamble has a production plant as well as a warehouse from which it conducts its logistics operations all over the world. At EURO-Park the German company Nestlé Purina PetCare (pet food) and the “T-Versand” division of Deutsche Telekom have their headquarters, the sugar factory Pfeifer & Langen is based at EURO-Park and the building materials chain Mobau (“Moderner Baubedarf”) – which has now merged into Eurobaustoff (Eurobaustoff) – was established.

Immediately adjacent to “Industriepark IPAS” is the "PrimeSite Rhine Region", an area reserved exclusively for major investors.^[4] With a total area of 205 hectares, which is equivalent to about 300 football fields, the "PrimeSite Rhine Region" is the first unbuilt and available industrial and commercial site of this size in North Rhine-Westphalia to date.^[5] Around 85 percent (177 hectares) of the site lies within the boundary of the town of Euskirchen^[6], while about 15 percent (28 hectares) belong to the municipality of Weilerswist. The already well developed large area will be reserved up to 2019 for space-intensive large-scale projects in excess of 80 hectares. It is being marketed internationally by the state economic development agency NRW.INVEST.^[7]

References

External links

Media related to [//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Euskirchen Euskirchen] at Wikimedia Commons