Greetings from Zurich!

Many of you will have changed jobs at some stage of your careers. But how much were you missed by your old employer?

As Switzerland’s chief diplomatic negotiator, State Secretary Livia Leu will hand over a bulging and complicated dossier to her successor at the end of August.

More on that later. But first, the other news of the day.

Keystone / Adam Vaughan

In the news: Russian state funds, Nazi jewels and Eurovision joy.

• In addition to freezing CHF7.5 billion of Russian oligarch funds, Switzerland has also immobilised CHF7.4 billion of assets belonging to the Russian central bank.
• A $200 million treasure trove of jewelleryis being auctioned in Geneva, despite links to a Nazi who made a fortune taking over the German businesses of fleeing Jewish owners.
• Switzerland has reached the final of the Eurovision Song Contest for the fourth year in a row, where Remo Forrer will perform his ballad “Watergun” in Liverpool.

Keystone / Peter Schneider

When to agree to disagree

If there’s one thing the Swiss frequently disagree upon, it’s the European Union.

Some think there should be a hard border defending national sovereignty; others believe in rapprochement and closer relations.

Switzerland and the EU have also tended to disagree a lot lately. Neither side can agree on how to move forward with their odd relationship.

At one stage, Switzerland agreed on a deal with the EU, but the government shelved it for fear that that voters would disagree with the agreement.

Now someone else is apparently in disagreement: Switzerland’s chief diplomatic negotiator Livia Leu. She has been in the middle of Swiss-EU negotiations since 2020.

Leu has decided to step down as State Secretary at the end of August and will become the new Swiss Ambassador to Germany.

The veteran diplomat has been disagreeing rather a lot with Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, according to many Swiss media.

The Swiss government has painted Leu’s career change as perfectly agreeable. The search for a new State Secretary is ongoing.

But has Leu jumped straight from the frying pan straight into the fire?

She may have dodged further fruitless negotiations on scientific cooperation and the EU’s electricity market. But Swiss-German relations have taken a bit of a tumble since Russia invaded Ukraine.

It can only be imagined that Leu will be spending quite a lot of her time explaining to the Germans why Switzerland won’t allow them to re-export munitions to war-torn Ukraine.

© Keystone / Gian Ehrenzeller

Mistaken identity

Switzerland’s habit of giving separate towns similar names (Dietlikon/Dietikon), or indeed the same name (Pfäffikon Zurich/Pfäffikon Schwyz), can sometimes cause confusion.

Such twin-named towns usually result in nothing worse than a misjudged train trip. But the case of Brienz is sowing seeds of doubt and mild consternation in the minds of tourists.

The tiny hamlet of Brienz in canton Graubünden has been evacuated with the nearby mountainside in danger of collapsing at any moment.

Tourists rarely venture to this remote village, but they do arrive in droves far away at the picturesque lakeside village of Brienz in the Bernese Oberland.

The Blick newspaper reports that the Brienz (canton Bern) tourist office is receiving worried calls from holidaymakers who have booked trips to the canton Bern destination.

“Some concerned tourists have asked us if they need to cancel their trip,” said a tourism office spokespersonExternal link.

A devastating flash-flood and mudslide that hit the Bernese Brienz in 2005 might also register on tourists’ Google searches.

If in doubt, tourists could turn to the other Swiss tradition of giving locations multiple names depending on the language being used (Genf, Genéve – or Geneva if you prefer English).

Brienz in Graubünden is known locally as Brinzauls. Or perhaps that might just add to the confusion.