The Swiss voice in the world since 1935

Swiss against further development aid cuts: survey

boxes marked 'Donated by Switzerland'
Population against cutting development aid, ETH survey Keystone-SDA

The Swiss population is against further cuts in development aid funds, according to a survey conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Most of the 4,305 people surveyed would not support cuts even to redirect funds to supporting Ukraine.

Some 77% of respondents believe that public spending on development cooperation should remain unchanged or even increase. Opposing cuts are not only those on the political left, but also a majority of those on the right (58%).

+ How Switzerland manages foreign aid during global upheaval

Respondents also demand that sub-Saharan African countries should not be penalised. In particular, 49% oppose reducing the funds allocated to this region in order to increase aid to Ukraine. Some 32% do not express an opinion, while only 19% support this possibility.

The 2025-2028 credit approved by parliament for poverty reduction and economic development cooperation is almost CHF1.5 billion less than originally requested by the Federal Council – a cut of 18%.

In total, the credit amounts to CHF11.1 billion. Switzerland has reserved about 14% of the funds for Ukraine.

More
The upshot of cuts to Swiss foreign aid

More

Foreign Affairs

The consequences of cuts to Swiss foreign aid

This content was published on After the Swiss parliament cut millions from the 2025 foreign aid budget, the Swiss government announced which aid programmes would be axed.

Read more: The consequences of cuts to Swiss foreign aid

Adapted from Italian by AI/mga

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch

External Content

Related Stories

Popular Stories

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.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR