Bernex () is a municipality of the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland.
History
Bernex is first mentioned in 1256 as Brenay.
Geography
thumb|left|Aire river in the hamlet of Lully
Bernex has an area, , of . Of this area, or 59.0% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 16.5% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 21.3% is settled (buildings or roads), or 3.2% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.2% is unproductive land.
Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 10.9% and transportation infrastructure made up 7.3%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.4% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 1.5%. Out of the forested land, 14.9% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.6% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 40.6% is used for growing crops and 5.5% is pastures, while 12.9% is used for orchards or vine crops. All the water in the municipality is flowing water. The 7 villages that compose Bernex's municipality are symbolically recalled on the coat of arms by the 7 flames of fire that burn at the top of the hill. This hill is the culminant point of the municipality (506 m, 1,660 ft), known as the Signal de Bernex, the second highest point of the Geneva canton.
The municipality of Bernex consists of the sub-sections or villages of Les Teppes, Châtillon, Chèvres, Loëx, Cressy - Molliers, Saint-Mathieu - Combes, Saint-Mathieu - stand, Luchepelet, Vailly, Le Gamay, La Naz - Guillon.
Neighbouring municipalities
Demographics
{| class="wikitable floatright"
|+ Largest groups of foreign residents 2013
|-
!Nationality || Amount || % total<br />(population)
|-
|||394||4.0
|-
|||314||3.2
|-
|||254||2.6
|-
|||126||1.3
|-
|||126||1.3
|-
|||97||1.0
|-
|||52||0.5
|-
|||40||0.4
|-
|||37||0.4
|-
|||37||0.4
|-
|||32||0.3
|-
|||31||0.3
|-
|||28||0.3
|-
|||25||0.2
|-
|||24||0.2
|-
|}
thumb|Mayor's house in Bernex
Bernex has a population () of . , 19.9% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of 11.2%. It has changed at a rate of 7.3% due to migration and at a rate of 1.5% due to births and deaths.
Most of the population () speaks French (7,759 or 85.5%), with German being second most common (421 or 4.6%) and English being third (193 or 2.1%). There are 3 people who speak Romansh and 168 people who speak Italian. Of the population in the municipality 1,839 or about 20.3% were born in Bernex and lived there in 2000. As of 2014, the origin of population was 44.7% were born in Geneva, 33% were born in other place of Switzerland, 22,4% were foreigners including 15,7% from European countries.
, there were 3,335 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.5 persons per household.
there were 3,456 apartments in the municipality. The most common apartment size was 4 rooms of which there were 951. There were 216 single room apartments and 958 apartments with five or more rooms. Of these apartments, a total of 3,211 apartments (92.9% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 205 apartments (5.9%) were seasonally occupied and 40 apartments (1.2%) were empty.
<timeline>
Colors=
id:lightgrey value:gray(0.9)
id:darkgrey value:gray(0.8)
ImageSize = width:960 height:210
PlotArea = height:150 left:100 bottom:50 right:100
AlignBars = justify
DateFormat = x.y
Period = from:0 till:9100
TimeAxis = orientation:vertical
AlignBars = justify
ScaleMajor = gridcolor:darkgrey increment:1800 start:0
ScaleMinor = gridcolor:lightgrey increment:360 start:0
PlotData=
color:yellowgreen width:40 mark:(line,white) align:center
bar:1850 from:start till:1622 text:"1,622"
bar:1860 from:start till:986 text:"986"
bar:1870 from:start till:932 text:"932"
bar:1880 from:start till:933 text:"933"
bar:1888 from:start till:895 text:"895"
bar:1900 from:start till:1004 text:"1,004"
bar:1910 from:start till:910 text:"910"
bar:1920 from:start till:1004 text:"1,004"
bar:1930 from:start till:1129 text:"1,129"
bar:1941 from:start till:1099 text:"1,099"
bar:1950 from:start till:1266 text:"1,266"
bar:1960 from:start till:1679 text:"1,679"
bar:1970 from:start till:3870 text:"3,870"
bar:1980 from:start till:8055 text:"8,055"
bar:1990 from:start till:8646 text:"8,646"
bar:2000 from:start till:9076 text:"9,076"
</timeline>
Politics
The Administrative Council is composed of 3 administrative councillors, one of whom is appointed mayor for one year. The three councillors share the dicasteries for the 5-year legislature. The municipal council is composed of 25 members. It is headed by an office composed of a president, a vice-president and a secretary. Commissions, in which the parties elected to the municipal council are represented by 1 or 2 commissioners, in proportion to their number of plenary seats, deal with particular subjects such as finance, buildings, social affairs, etc.
In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SVP which received 19.7% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the Green Party (18.31%), the SP (17.39%) and the LPS Party (13.79%). In the federal election, a total of 2,898 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 49.7%.
In the 2009 Grand Conseil election, there were a total of 5,937 registered voters of which 2,486 (41.9%) voted. The most popular party in the municipality for this election was the PDC with 15.6% of the ballots. In the canton-wide election they received the fifth highest proportion of votes. The second most popular party was the Les Verts (with 15.4%), they were also second in the canton-wide election, while the third most popular party was the Libéral (with 14.0%), they were first in the canton-wide election.
For the 2009 Conseil d'État election, there were a total of 5,945 registered voters of which 2,954 (49.7%) voted.
|-
!Name of the candidates
!Votes
!Political Party
!Status
|-
|ANTILLE-DUBOIS Guylaine
|1,805
|PS and Verts
|Elected
|-
|VONLANTHEN Gilbert
|1,771
|PLR
|Elected
|-
|HUGUENIN-BERGENAT Cyril
|1,630
|PDC
|Elected
|-
|BAUMANN Karl-Anton
|953
|PLR
|Not elected
|-
|ROSSINI Lionel-Pierre
|600
|UDC
|Not elected
|-
|
|
|
|
|-
|Absolute majority
|1,598
|
|
|-
|Participation
|44.07%
|
|
|}
Economy
, Bernex had an unemployment rate of 3.6%. , there were 170 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 34 businesses involved in this sector. 425 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 59 businesses in this sector. 1,533 people were employed in the tertiary sector, with 184 businesses in this sector.
, there were 1,690 workers who commuted into the municipality and 3,857 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net exporter of workers, with about 2.3 workers leaving the municipality for every one entering. About 15.6% of the workforce coming into Bernex are coming from outside Switzerland, while 0.0% of the locals commute out of Switzerland for work. Of the working population, 20.3% used public transportation to get to work, and 63.8% used a private car. During that school year, there were 209 children who were in a pre-kindergarten class. The canton's school system provides two years of non-mandatory kindergarten and requires students to attend six years of primary school, with some of the children attending smaller, specialized classes. In Bernex there were 336 students in kindergarten or primary school and 21 students were in the special, smaller classes. The secondary school program consists of three lower, obligatory years of schooling, followed by three to five years of optional, advanced schools. There were 336 lower secondary students who attended school in Bernex. There were 548 upper secondary students from the municipality along with 111 students who were in a professional, non-university track program. An additional 124 students attended a private school.
, there were 43 students in Bernex who came from another municipality, while 961 residents attended schools outside the municipality.
In April 2017, the municipality announced its plan to reduce the use of fuel oil by 96% by 2030.