Switzerland Today
Hello from Bern!
We’re all feeling the weight of the corona cloud hanging over us here in Switzerland. Today top health experts called the situation “critical” as the number of new daily cases reached more than 6,000 – the highest since the major surge last autumn. It seems that every other day I receive news of a friend in quarantine, or an event being cancelled, creating an uneasy feeling – especially with the holidays around the corner.
In the News: Boosters are on their way
- Swiss medicines regulator Swissmedic announced approval of a third shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for people 16 and up. Prior to this, booster shots were only being administered to vulnerable groups or people with compromised immune systems. This announcement “clears the way” for wider use of the booster vaccination, writes Swissmedic. When those boosters will be available isn’t clear, but many people are eager to get another jab as the holiday travel season approaches.
- The Swiss attorney general has ordered three Swiss subsidiaries of energy firm SBM Offshore to pay CHF7 million ($7.5 million) for failing to prevent corruption payments. According to an investigation, the company didn’t do enough to stop the payment of bribes to public officials in Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria between 2006 and 2012. This is the latest stage in proceedings that already led to the conviction of a former SBM executive and settlements in the US, Brazil, and the Netherlands.
- The latest federal statistics show that the average disposable household income in Switzerland is CHF6,609 per month. This might sound like a hefty sum compared with other countries, but a good chunk is siphoned off for the expensive living. Taxes and insurance eat up a third of household budgets and about half of income is spent on consumer goods. Housing and energy costs eat up about 14%. One interesting but unsurprising factExternal link from the stats: the average monthly amount spent going out to eat hit a low of under CHF50 in the 1st quarter of 2020, compared with an average of around CHF200 in the past three years.
Swiss by birth? Eh, not quite yet.
The red passport is hardly handed out like free party favours. Since changes to Swiss immigration law came into force in 2018, it has become even harder to become Swiss. The number of people who received the red passport has nearly halved since then. The average naturalisation rate across the country stands at about 2% – that’s the share of foreigners (which represent a quarter of the population) who became Swiss.
The civil rights group called the Observatory for Asylum and Foreigner Rights says that the strict process to naturalisation is preventing many people from exercising their political rights. Stories abound about people being rejected because of a simple traffic violation or for incorrectly guessing the name of the Alphorn, a traditional Swiss musical instrument.
The fact that the experience is so different for people across the country is also a problem. While one commune requires a written test and a detailed rundown of different Swiss cheeses and rivers, another invites locals to vote on a person’s application. This only leads to more inequality, says the Observatory.
So what’s the answer? The Observatory says it’s time to consider citizenship by birth (something familiar to Americans) and an easier pathway to people who have been in the country since they were children.
There’s some nostalgia for our corona freedom. With cases creeping upwards these past few weeks, it’s not hard to feel a sense of déjà vu.
Haven’t we been here before? But it’s different this time around, writes FT journalist Sam Jones in a guest essay in the Tages-Anzeiger.
Jones looked back at the first wave of the pandemicExternal link with a sort of nostalgia for the long walks through Zurich, passing the immaculate urban gardens and running into friends and families grilling over rustic fires. This became a metaphor for how Switzerland handled the pandemic in the beginning: “a careful order built around personal responsibility and many neatly drawn small boundaries. And on the other: a wonderment at nature and our submission and escape into it.”
I recall this as well. The freedom to walk with a friend along the river or through the forest, or to ride my bike across bridges and in tunnels without swerving to avoid traffic.
Switzerland wasn’t spared from the pandemic. Nearly 11,000 people have died from Covid-19. But we had many liberties here that were unheard of in other countries. Jones writes that Switzerland largely avoided one of the pandemic’s most crushing effects in Britain and elsewhere in Europe: loneliness.
But Switzerland’s pandemic story is far from over, as health experts warned today. “The coming months may prove to be some of the hardest yet for Switzerland,” writes Jones.
More
Searching for the sound of silence on the noisiest street. If you are looking for some peace and quiet, SWI swissinfo.ch’s office in Bern is apparently not the best place.
That’s according to an analysis comparing noise levels across the country. Despite being in one of the quietest cities in the country, Giacomettistrasse is the loudest street in all of Switzerland because of its proximity to two major motorways.
This isn’t just a fun fact though, according to an analysisExternal link by the Zurich Cantonal Bank, street noise is to blame for around CHF300 million per year in losses to rental income.
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