Switzerland Today
Greetings from Lausanne!
Here are the latest news and stories from Switzerland on Friday.
In the news: Geneva-Lausanne trains running again, Baselworld postponed and a mixed national vaccination week.
- Swiss President Guy Parmelin has drawn a mixed assessmentExternal link of the national “vaccination” week now drawing to a close.
- As of Friday morning, trains are running againExternal link with a reduced service on the Geneva to Lausanne rail line. The line had been suspended since Tuesday afternoon after land collapsed near the tracks.
- Organisers of the annual Baselworld watch fair, which was cancelled the past two years due to the pandemic, have again postponed the 2022 spring edition. They blamed the “renewed worsening” of the Covid situation and customer uncertainty.
- Swiss Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga has praised a surprise US-China declaration on climate change made this week at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, which wraps up on Friday evening.
- Switzerland’s justice minister, Karin Keller-Sutter, has called for humanitarian aid for migrants stuck at the European Union’s eastern border but says Europe must not give in to blackmail by Belarus.
Historians put pressure on Kunsthaus Zurich over Bührle collection.
The Bührle collection, over 200 Impressionist masterpieces named after the Swiss arms dealer, and the Kunsthaus Zurich fine arts museum, where they are showcased in a new extension, face mounting pressure from organisations and researchers.
Some 65 years after his death, Swiss arms tycoon Emil Bührle is remembered more for his dealings with the Nazis than for his taste as an art collector. From the 1930s, he made a sizeable part of his fortune from dealings with Hitler’s Germany, and he benefited from the Nazi slave labour system. He also collected art on a princely scale, including paintings that he later had to restore to their owners as Nazi-looted art.
The decision to show Bührle’s extensive collection – including some paintings whose ownership is contested – has been criticised in the press and in a new book.
Now, nearly 20 years after their investigation into Switzerland’s financial dealings during World War II was published, former members of the “Bergier commission” have added their voices to the chorus of condemnationExternal link, posing anew the question of whether Switzerland has done enough to address its complicity with Nazi crimes.
This week the Bührle foundation announced that it was open to an independent appraisal of the origins of the works at the Kunsthaus. It was reacting to a request by Zurich city and cantonal authorities.
The foundation nonetheless maintains that the Bührle collection is “one of the most thoroughly documented private art collections in the world”. It says its extensive past research had shown that “there is no unresolved piece of looted artwork” in the collection.
For many people in Switzerland the dream of buying a home remains just that – an unattainable fantasy.
House prices have rocketed in the past 20 years and are likely to continue to rise, as Swiss public television reportsExternal link. Since the last real estate crisis at the end of the 1990s, the prices of residential property have more than doubled.
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic last year, the value of private property has risen sharply again – and not just in urban areas. Prices rose steeply in cantons Graubünden and Jura and in central Switzerland, for example.
According to the real estate service provider IAZI, in the most expensive cantonal capital, Geneva, a worker on an average salary would have to work for almost 30 years to save up to buy a property. In Zurich and Lausanne, this would represent over 20 years of work. Even in a cheap canton like Glarus, the average wage earner would have to toil for almost 10 years to buy a home.
Geneva Airport dreams of better days
Geneva Airport may be suffering from the sharp drop in passengers caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. But officials are still planning and dreaming for when international air travel again takes off.
A new 520-metre-long terminal, known as the East Wing, will be inaugurated on December 14 to improve the reception and handling of international travellers. Volunteers have been testingExternal link the facilities.
Work on the CHF610 million project, which started in 2017, was completed earlier this year. The terminal should accommodate around 2,800 passengers per hour for departures and 3,000 per hour for arrivals.
The pandemic has devastated the air transport industry. Geneva Airport recorded a loss of CHF129.5 million ($145 million) in 2020. Just over 5 million passengers embarked or disembarked at Geneva airport, 70% fewer than in 2019. So far this year, 4.5 million have passed through the airport; numbers have been picking up since summer.
Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, officials predicted air traffic to increase from 18 million passengers in 2019 to 25 million passengers by 2030. But airport director André SchneiderExternal link only expects the airport to recover its 2019 passenger figures (18 million) in 2024.
Migros supermarket may start selling alcohol.
Shoppers from Europe might be mildly shocked to hear that Migros, one of the country’s most popular retailers, doesn’t stock alcohol or tobacco.
But that may change. Migros recently announced that it is considering selling alcohol in its supermarkets, after almost a century of abstinence. Last Saturday it took the first step towards offering alcohol (but not tobacco), when 85 of the company’s 111 delegates voted in favourExternal link of amending the company’s statutes to lift the booze ban. This cleared the path to letting the ten regional cooperative committees vote on the issue next month. If they back the amendment, it will go to Migros’ 2.27 million members on June 4. The regions where two-thirds of members give the thumbs up will then be able to start stocking their shelves with alcohol.
This is a big democratic change, and the debate is likely to get spirited over the next six months. Already, reaction on social media has been lively, as Swiss public radio RTS reportsExternal link.
This article by my colleague Thomas Stephens gives the back story to the Migros alcohol and tobacco bans and explains why the retailer may now be changing its tune.
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