Switzerland Today
Hello from Bern,
Here are the news and stories from Switzerland on Thursday, February 17.
In the news: Bad timing for President Cassis, and good results for Swiss films in Berlin.
- Just a day after announcing the end of most Covid measures in the country, Swiss President Ignazio Cassis has tested positive for the virus. As soon as Cassis learnt the test result on Thursday morning, he immediately went into isolation, a government statement said. He will thus have to skip the Munich Security Conference set to take place on Friday and Saturday this week. He has no symptoms.
- The government plans to initiate talks with the EU about participating in the multi-billion-euro Copernicus Earth observation programme. Copernicus, which provides satellite data to help things like environmental modelling, is one of the EU’s two flagship space programmes. To join, Switzerland must negotiate a bilateral association agreement with Brussels before turning to parliament for approval.
- Three Swiss films have been awarded prizes at the Berlinale film festival. Filmmaker Michael Koch from Lucerne won a special mention in the “International” category for his film Drii Winter (“A Piece of Sky”). Cyril Schäublin was named best director for Unrueh (“Unrest”) in the “Encounters” category. The co-production A vendredi, Robinson (“See you Friday, Robinson”) by director Mitra Farahani won a special jury award.
The morning after – latest Covid survey finds an optimistic Swiss public.
How do you gauge public sentiment just a day after the end of (most) Covid restrictions? You could go for a stroll through the nation’s towns and train stations to check who’s wearing masks and who’s not, and to chat to the folk in the cafés – as Keystone-SDA did in Geneva, Lausanne, Sion, and BernExternal link. You could gather as many reactions as possible from politicians, interest groups, and business associations, as we did this morning. You could even stick your nose (carefully) into Twitter, to see how some people are unhappy about the fast openings (#OhneMaskeOhneMich).
Or you could publish a survey of 33,000 people! We live in the glorious age of the opinion poll, and so we already have today the 10th Sotomo Covid-Monitor to tell us what we think. Granted, polling was finished three days before yesterday’s decision: but there are still indications of the mood. And the main headline – as our French-language colleagues write today – is that “never since the start of the pandemic […] has optimism about the evolution and outcome of the coronavirus crisis been so high as at the start of February 2022”.
The stats suggest the government’s decisions were largely “correct”, i.e. in line with public opinion. Just 28% of those surveyed thought a lifting of measures now would be “premature”, while 39% would have liked to see it happening even faster. As for masks, slightly over half would like them to remain required in shops (as of today this is no longer the case), and 62% felt they were still necessary on public transport (as of today is one of the last places where this is the case).
And while the optimism is tempered by the fact that just over half expect restrictions again next winter, all in all the Swiss public is mainly on the same page as its leaders. The pandemic is not over, but it’s time to learn to live with Covid, a majority reckons – literally the same thing Health Minister Alain Berset said on RTS radio this morning. You’d almost think the government reads these surveys before decisions. And yet, alas, for all its finger on the pulse, one thing remains on the downturn: trust in official health policy has fallen from 53% to 45% since last October.
Five gold medals in Beijing, and plenty of Chasselas.
In winning the women’s combined race today, skier Michelle Gisin (above right, with Wendy Holdener) gave Switzerland a record fifth gold medal at the Beijing Winter Olympics. No other country has ever won so many Alpine events at one Games. With Gisin’s teammate Wendy Holdener finishing second in the same event, Switzerland is having a successful Olympics – and it almost had yet another medal in the ski cross event this morning, before Fanny Smith was disqualified for a manoeuvre the judges deemed foul-playExternal link (a decision RTS deemed “absurd”). What’s the secret of the Swiss success? According to the AP news agency, it’s the relaxed approach within the camp, whose motto is apparently “Drink wine, Ski Fast”. Don’t try it at home!
Agricultural policy in Switzerland – at a snail’s pace
After some macroscopic decisions yesterday – Covid, a new “space policy”, participation in the Copernicus programme – the government today toned things down by commenting on the future of snail farming in Switzerland. A parliamentarian from Ticino, a snail-eating canton, asked the government to promote snails to the status of official “farm animals”, which would enable them to come under general agricultural legislation – currently snails are official food, but (like insects and fish) are not beasts of burden… Is “heliculture” (the lovely name for snail farming) the future of Swiss agriculture? Not so fast: while the government is open to authorising small snail-farming enclosures in the future, it’s less keen to recognise it as a full agricultural activity, it said.
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