Switzerland Today

Greetings from Bern!

Here are the latest stories from Switzerland on the first Wednesday of February, and that means: siren tests!

Keystone

In the news:  At 1:30pm some 5,000 stationary and 2,200 mobile emergency sirens went off across the country, sending cats and dogs (and unsuspecting tourists) running for shelter.

• Introduced during wartime, they are now used to alert the population to impending natural catastrophes, chemical hazards or flooding (in areas lying below dams, an additional water alarm went off about an hour later).
• In 11 days the Swiss go to the polls for the first of four times this year. Voters will decide on four issues at a national level: banning tobacco ads targeting children, banning animal testing, public funds for the media, and scrapping stamp duty on equity capital. The final poll, released this morning, reckons only the smoking ban will get the thumbs-up.
• This afternoon the government announced it would begin easing coronavirus pandemic restrictions as fears waned that a spike in infections fuelled by the Omicron variant would overwhelm the health care system. Quarantine rules and a work-from-home order will end tomorrow, it said.

© Keystone / Walter Bieri

One of your citizens, a dual national, is given a prestigious honour by the Queen. An occasion for congratulations? Not in Switzerland! Here’s a bizarre insight into Swiss bureaucracy.

It’s fair to say Sarah Springman (pictured, with Economics Minister Guy Parmelin) is an overachiever. An elite triathlete and rower, she is also one of the world’s most accomplished academic geotechnical engineers (this sells her achievements very short!). Born and educated in the UK, she also has Swiss citizenship and was rector of the federal technology institute ETH Zurich from 2015 until the day before yesterday. She took up her latest challenge, Principal of St Hilda’s College at the University of Oxford, yesterday.

The “trouble” started when Springman was made a Dame (DBE) in the Queen’s New Year Honours List “for services to engineering and to international sports administration”. This level of award is limited to only 845 men and women, and ETH Zurich spoke of the “high honour”External link for Dame Sarah.

The Swiss foreign ministry was less congratulatory. In a Twitter threadExternal link on Monday, Springman shared and responded to a “charming letter”, as she put it, written on January 6 from the foreign ministry to ETH Zurich. In it, the foreign ministry asked whether, in the view of the institute, Springman was “justified in accepting the honour”.

But what’s the problem? Why has an award from the Queen triggered an investigation by the Swiss government?

The reason is a ban going back to 1848 (the creation of the Swiss federal state) that says that parliamentarians, federal councillors and civil servants may not accept honours from foreign states. This was based on fears that Switzerland might break apart if too many Swiss had foreign honours (fears of French honours were particularly high).

Springman was thus targeted by the foreign ministry because, as an employee of ETH Zurich, she was also a federal civil servant.

Read Springman’s full response in her thread, but she notes that the institute didn’t seem to mind her previous two honours (an OBE in 1997 and a CBE in 2012). She also gave it some advice: “Please focus on getting [Switzerland] associated to the European Scientific Area so that leading academics/scientists, who star in highly ranked [Swiss] universities, have access to the support needed to fire up & uphold the country’s eco- & innovation-system.”

Keystone / Peter Schneider

Last month Switzerland set itself the official target of 15 medals at the Beijing Olympics, which start on Friday. A metadata analysis thinks the Swiss are being pessimistic.

According to the 2022 Virtual Medal TableExternal link by US company Gracenote, Switzerland will in fact bring home 21 medals, including six golds.

“Alpine skiing and freestyle skiing are the key sports if Switzerland is to achieve a new Olympic record number of medals,” the company said, with skiers Beat Feuz, Marco Odermatt, Lara Gut-Behrami (pictured) and Corinne Suter named as athletes to “watch out for”.

If the Swiss were to win 21 medals, that would put them in sixth place on the medal table. Norway is expected, once again, to come top (with 44 medals) thanks to its cross-country skiers and biathletes. Second and third is expected to be a close fight between Germany and the Russia Olympic Committee (both forecast to win 30 medals), and fourth and fifth is a toss-up between the US and Canada (22 medals).