Banking on Outsiders : Geneva--Affluence, Calvin, Too

This is a small, wealthy, Calvinist city whose people like to think of themselves as worldly but who are fretting these days over the large numbers of foreigners living in their midst.

This worry has kept the attention of the Genevese away from the U.S.-Soviet summit meeting in the past few weeks and on local elections, in which immigrants have been an issue. Interest in the meeting did not perk up until a few days ago when residents, digesting the election returns, began to hear about impending parking restrictions and the large numbers of Swiss police and soldiers coming to town.

“I would not say the people of Geneva are blase about the summit,” said Francoise Buffat, who covers local politics for the Journal de Geneve. “They are proud of it. But they are not passionate about it.”

Even-Tempered Society

Most analysts, in fact, would say that it is not in the nature of Genevese to be passionate about anything. They live in an even-handed and even-tempered society clustered around the edge of their calm and lovely lake, which lies beneath the massive Alps. And they live in an economy that has escaped the ravages of worldwide recession.

“Geneva,” a long-time American resident said recently at dinner, “is an oasis of privilege.”

No one here was surprised when Geneva, a city of only 175,000, was chosen by the Americans and Soviets as the site for their summit meeting.

“We decided 100 years ago to go into the international business,” said Robert Vieux, the chief of information and protocol of the canton (or state) of Geneva at his office in the centuries-old Town Hall. “And now it’s a tradition.”

Woodrow Wilson’s Suggestion

The International Committee of the Red Cross, founded in Geneva and still here, sponsored the diplomatic conference in 1864 that produced the first convention covering treatment of the sick and wounded in war. At the suggestion of President Woodrow Wilson, Geneva became the headquarters of the League of Nations between the two world wars. It ranks second only to New York as a center of activity for agencies of the United Nations.

In 1955, Geneva was the site of the first summit conference after World War II--a meeting of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Soviet Premier Nikolai A. Bulganin and Soviet Communist Party chief Nikita S. Khrushchev, French Premier Edgar Faure and British Prime Minister Anthony Eden. Scores of major international conferences are held here every year.

Despite all this internationalism, Switzerland is not a member of the United Nations and the meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Geneva could contribute to keeping it out.

The Swiss, who are jealous of their neutrality, will vote in March on whether to join the United Nations. Some opponents of joining are citing the summit meeting as proof that Geneva does not need U.N. membership to keep its attraction as an international city. The proposal is expected to lose.

The wealth of Geneva is based mainly on servicing all this international activity, on banking, and on the manufacture of luxury watches. At a time when the Swiss watchmaking industry as a whole is depressed because of Japanese competition, the Geneva industry is booming, selling diamond-studded gold watches, the most luxurious of them for many thousands of dollars each.

Shop windows along the lakefront avenues display some watches that are so studded with jewels it is difficult to tell the time. These are designed to appeal to Arab sheiks who travel to Geneva often to check on their bank accounts and lakeside villas. According to residents here, these purchases offend the Calvinism of Geneva but not enough to keep local manufacturers from making more luxury watches.

Geneva is the city of John Calvin, the French Protestant who in 1536 came here to put many of his austere and puritanical ideas into practice. Thousands of French Protestants, including many watchmakers, followed him here after a series of bloody repressions in France.

Sermon Against Avarice

Calvin’s church, the Cathedral of St. Pierre of the Swiss Reform Church, stands on a hill dominating the old quarter of Geneva. Its massive Gothic walls are bare inside, and its minister, on a recent Sunday, preached against avarice in this city of wealth, urging the Genevese to give generously to charity and to their church.

With the massive immigration of recent years, Catholics now make up a bit more than half of the population of Geneva, but most residents think of their city as still Calvinist. “We are Calvinist in tradition, in our thinking,” said Vieux, the chief of protocol.

Buffat, the Journal de Geneve writer, said: “Everyone takes on Calvinist attitudes here. The Catholics here are almost Protestants. They both have a sense of guilt.”

A Genevese shopkeeper looked shocked the other day when an American contemplated buying a package of cognac-filled chocolate for her 13-year-old son.

Another resident said, “If you make a mistake while driving and break some traffic regulation, at least three people will stop and angrily wave a finger at you.”

Good Time Elsewhere

Buffat said over tea on a recent Saturday: “People do not have a good time in Geneva. If they want to have a good time, they go elsewhere. The people who animate the city are the international community--the Italian immigrants, and others like them--not the Swiss.”

These sentiments are not new. The French philosopher Voltaire wrote while in exile in Geneva in 1755: “I have always said that when you are 25, you must live in Paris, but when you are 50, you must live here.”

The wealth of Geneva has attracted many immigrants in recent years. Many Italians, Spaniards, East Indians and other foreigners can be found working in the shops, hotels and restaurants. According to government statistics, 36% of the population of Geneva is made up of foreigners.

This has caused backlash, conflict and much soul-searching. Promising to expel illegal immigrants and to keep out additional international agencies, the Vigilantes, a party of the extreme right, won 19 out of 100 seats in an election last month for the assembly of the canton of Geneva, making the Vigilantes one of the two strongest parties. Many Genevese, who dislike extremes of any kind, were shocked by the vote.

Buffat described the vote as a kind of temporary illness.

“I sometimes think that Geneva has become too rich,” she said. “It is as if the people are eating too much, stuffing themselves on foie gras until they feel sick. I think that accounts for the vote for the Vigilantes.”

The results of a second election seemed to indicate that the indigestion was over. The Vigilantes failed to win a seat in the Nov. 8-10 election of the seven-member Council of State that runs the government of the canton.

Issue Not Dead

But that did not defuse the issue of immigration. Still angry about the Swiss government’s recent expulsion of 59 illegal immigrants to their native Zaire, Protestant and Catholic churches in Geneva offered sanctuary after the election to 44 other foreigners facing expulsion.

The significance of the summit was driven home to most Genevese by the security arrangements announced during the week preceding the conference.

“I remember a meeting at the 1955 Big Four summit,” Jacques Vernet, president of the Geneva Council of State, told a news conference, “when only two uniformed policemen stood guard at the door. We have had to increase this security considerably, alas.”

Two thousand soldiers and 500 policemen from other cantons have arrived in the city to supplement Geneva’s 1,000 regular policemen. The army has also moved 15 light tanks into the city. On top of this, the U.S. and Soviet governments have the authority to protect their leaders with their own security forces. Swiss officials refused to give any details about American and Soviet security.

Guy Fontanet, the vice president of the council, warned Genevese not to bother the soldiers and police by talking with them during the meeting. He said they had orders to shoot anyone who enters a prohibited area and fails to stop when commanded to halt.

“The army is not an operetta show,” he said. “They are armed.”

The Genevese face other restrictions during the conference. Traffic is being detoured around the sites of the meetings, prohibiting the parking of cars anywhere near the sites, closing several frontier crossings and warning all aircraft that they will be intercepted if they fly over the heart of the city.

An Extra $1.25 Million

The cost of having the meeting is high. Since Geneva will use up the remainder of its regular budget of $1 million a year for organizing and protecting international conferences, the canton has been granted an extra $1.25 million for the summit meeting by the government of the confederation of Switzerland.

But Geneva officials feel that these costs will be more than made up by the enormous free publicity the city receives from the conference.

“Think how much it would cost in your newspaper,” Vieux, the chief of protocol, said, “to advertise Geneva so much.”