Switzerland Today

Dear Swiss Abroad,

It’s official: 2022 has been the warmest and sunniest year since measurements began in 1864. Apart from September, every month was above average, MeteoSwiss reports.

Geneva, Basel and Zurich recorded their sunniest year. 2022 is also one of the top ten years for the least precipitation.

While ski resorts have enjoyed early snow, warmer temperatures mean it’s melting fast and artificial snow is the order of the day. Fingers crossed for a white Christmas!

Here are other stories from Switzerland on Thursday, December 22, 2022.

Keystone / Stringer

In the news: Taliban condemnation, new power plant and Franz Gertsch.Covid-19 did not spark moves from the city to the countryside.Incoming Swiss President Alain Berset prepares for busy year.

• Switzerland, the United States, the European Union and ten other countries have condemned the Taliban’s decision to ban women from universities in Afghanistan.
• The Swiss government has added a second power plant – in Cornaux in the western canton of Neuchâtel – to its reserve power network, in addition to a facility that is being built from scratch in the north of the country.
• Franz Gertsch, one of Switzerland’s most influential artists and master of the hyper-realistic style, has died at the age of 92.
• Geneva has been chosen as one of three European test sites for a full-scale driverless public bus service. This is part of the Horizon Europe ULTIMO mobility initiative that builds on the successful results of a University of Geneva pilot project in the city.
• A study by Swiss researchers shows that the acidity of air determines how long airborne viruses remain infectious. This has major implications for virus transmission and strategies to contain it, the authors say.
• Finance Minister Ueli MaurermetExternal link his British counterpart, Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on Thursday in London to discuss progress on talks on a mutual recognition agreement for the financial sector to be finalised by summer 2023.

The pandemic generated numerous headlines about changing lifestyles, hybrid work and people moving to chalets in the mountains or the countryside to work and for a better quality of life. 

But according to a studyExternal link by the Federal Housing Office, the impact of the pandemic on housing was “less than imagined”, it declaredExternal link on Thursday.

Forced to work at home, people turned dining rooms and bedrooms into offices, with ironing boards even used as tables for computers. Meanwhile, leisure opportunities were also limited. All the more reason to escape to the mountains. “It was tempting to imagine that the effects of this situation would be felt on the housing market,” the office said.

But the reality was that the real effect was “marginal”. In the end only 4,000 more people decided to move to a less densely populated location in 2020, the office reported.

Those upping sticks were mainly single, mobile, high wage earners, or couples, managers and people who owned their own property, it said.

Although people did not move location as much as suspected, there was a notable uptick in the number of people renting or buying larger accommodation, it noted.

“I shouldn’t say it: I can move around alone again. Which does a lot of good,” Alain Berset (photo above) toldExternal link Swiss public TV, RTS on Wednesday. He is now the most senior member of seven-person cabinet and will take on the rotating role of Swisspresidentnextyear. This is the second time the interior minister is assuming this role; the last was in 2018.

Since then, Switzerland “has clearly changed“, he told RTS. The country has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia has invaded Ukraine, sparking an energy crisis.

“There is a lot of insecurity, things that are not very clear,” said the politician from Fribourg. The situation is tougher and “our role is to redefine it,” he told RTS.

His presidential year promises to be busy. Switzerland will become one of the ten non-permanent UN Security Council members next year. It is due to chair the councilExternal link in May 2023, and then again in October 2024. Meanwhile, the question of long-term relations between Bern and Brussels remains up in the air.

During his presidential year, Berset will travel to Colombia and Mozambique as well as New York, he told Le Temps in a long interviewExternal link. In May, a high-level meeting is organised in New York on the protection of civilians in conflict zones. Bern also wants to put the focus on political support for peace processes.

“I intend to travel to Mozambique and Colombia, for example, in order to see the reality on the ground before the presidential debate in May,” said Berset.

He will return to New York in September for the UN General Assembly, accompanied by Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis.