Swiss homeowners to pay for earthquake damage
In the event of a major earthquake, property owners will have to contribute a small share towards covering the damage.
On Friday, the Federal Council put a joint financing system out to consultation. Even though protection against earthquakes is in principle the responsibility of the cantons, the federal government has the power to legislate at national level and to levy a contribution from property owners.
The plan is for all property owners to contribute a maximum of 0.7% of the insured value of their buildings to cover the damage. As things stand, if a major earthquake were to occur, some CHF22 billion would be available to cover the damage.
This figure corresponds to the amount of damage expected in the event of an earthquake that is expected to occur once every 500 years.
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.