Switzerland Today

Hello from Bern,

Alpine Switzerland is experiencing tropical heat this week. At least 6,508 people found a place to cool off yesterday though. This is the number of people who donned a pink bathing cap for the 32nd Zurich City Seeüberquerung (lake crossing). Participants not only got to keep the cap, but also received an “invigorating” bowl of bouillon soup at the end. With the lake at 24°C and an air temperature over 30°C, it didn’t take much to warm up.

© Keystone / Gaetan Bally

In the News: Swiss insecurities, plant-based dairy and mountain accidents.The trouble with flying is on the ground and in the airCommodity traders get a warning

• A government survey has revealed that Swiss views on the defence alliance NATO are changing. For the first time most people (52%) support closer cooperation with NATO; in January 2021 the figure was 45%. Although a clear majority of Swiss voters are still against becoming a formal member of NATO, some 27% support NATO membership, which is significantly higher than in previous years.
• The land of cheese and milk chocolate appears to be moving towards plant-based dairy products. Sales of milk made from soy, rice, wheat, oat and nuts more than doubled since 2017. The retail market share of dairy substitutes was 4.2% last year.
• There were two fatal mountainExternal link accidents reported today. One Swiss climber died on the Italian side of the Matterhorn. This is the fifth fatality near the Matterhorn in the last two months. A 43-year-old French man also died on Wednesday evening at the “High Ultimate” point in Lauterbrunnen used by base jumpersExternal link.

I’m scheduled to take a flight tomorrow along with millions of other vacationers. The Swiss seem to have said adieu to the mountain holiday-goers this year. “Locals discovered Switzerland as a travel destination during the pandemic, but now they want to go back to the beachExternal link”, wrote Swiss public television SRF.

But flying isn’t easy these days. Zurich airport was faring better than other airports but it now seems the real crunch hadn’t hit. The Tages-Anzeiger reported today that “more and more passengers are freaking out in Zurich”. Screaming, climbing onto ticket counters, spitting on staff – it sounds like any other day with a toddler. But these are stories of grown-ups, apparently angry ones who are increasingly lashing out at airline employeesExternal link.

These aren’t the only problems with flying, of course. Aviation remains one of the fast-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and the most intractable. Could all the jetsetting this summer jeopardise Switzerland’s climate goals?

“I fear we will bounce back and even go back on the increasing trajectory we had before,” Georg Klingler, a climate expert at Greenpeace Switzerland, told my colleague Simon Bradley.

The Swiss love to fly, much more than other Europeans. But how much so is increasingly being tested.

A couple of months ago, Swiss Attorney General Stefan Blättler announced that the country was setting up a taskforce to collect information about war crimes in Ukraine. These crimes are violations of international law such as intentionally killing civilians, torture, and unlawful deportation. “Looting” also constitutes a war crime.

In an opinion piece in Le Temps published yesterday, Blättler noted that this doesn’t mean that this looting doesn’t have to take place within the country’s borders. This could include “certain offences committed a considerable distance from an ongoing conflict that could have a direct link with it,” he wrote.

With this he was referring to the trade in raw materials, specifically commodities like grain and coal that have been stolen from Ukraine. Switzerland is a major hub for commodity traders. Some 900 companies, including big traders like Trafigura, Glencore, Mercuria and Vitol, are based in places like Geneva and Zug. 

Some three-quarters of Russian crude oil and oil products are managed in Switzerland. It also has a major role in the trade of Russian and Ukrainian grain and vegetable oil.

How Blättler plans to follow this up is unclear. The sector is notoriously opaque, which makes it difficult to trace the flow of commodities. At least, the government announced plans on June 29 to build a foundation of “reliable data on Swiss commodity trading”. Sounds like a reasonable starting point.