Switzerland Today
Hello from Bern,
April 12 is the day that Switzerland’s energy independence ends. If the country relied entirely on domestic energy sources, the lights would go out tomorrow, reported the Swiss Energy Foundation today. It's a bit unsettling but it could be worse. Luxembourg would have been cut off on January 28 and Italy on April 7. Estonia, on the other hand, would keep the power running until November 22.
Fortunately the lights are still on here in Bern to bring you the latest news and stories making the rounds in Switzerland.
In the News: Booming trade with the US; lower snow levels; and defining consensual sex.
- The US surpassed Germany as Switzerland’s largest export destination. Exports to the US tripled over the past 20 years, reaching CHF47 billion ($50.4 billion) in 2021. With this, the US has pushed Germany out of top spot as the most important Swiss export market for the first time in 70 years. This was driven largely by sales of pharmaceutical products.
- Snowfall levels were only slightly below average despite long dry spells in January and March, according to the Swiss Snow and Avalanche Research Institute, which published its winter report today. The situation in the south was different however, with the least snowfall since researchers started measuring levels. The researchers also recorded fewer avalanche accidentsExternal link than usual. Some 145 avalanches resulted in personal injury or property damage over the winter. Twelve people died.
- Swiss federal police are due to travel to Serbia at the end of the month in connection with death threats received by the former Swiss prosecutor Dick Marty. Marty has been under armed guard for nearly a year-and-a-half following death threats he believes originate from the Serbian intelligence services.
- A survey by Amnesty International Switzerland found more people in Switzerland back the “yes means yes” legal definition of consensual sex, rather than placing the onus on people to say “no”. The survey was carried out as debates continue in parliament about revising the Swiss criminal code in accordance with the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, which notably foresees legal penalties for sex without consent.
Russia has harsh words for Switzerland
Twitter appears to be the place to find out what the Russian Federation thinks of Switzerland. Today a spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry criticised Swiss foreign minister Ignazio Cassis for what she called an “arbitrary” understanding of history and the country’s neutral position in the Ukraine war.
At issue is an interview by Cassis in a Luxembourg paper in which he says that the Ukraine war is the end of an era – since the end of the Second World War – when not a single sovereign and democratic country in Europe has been attacked.
The spokesperson said this isn’t correct, arguing that the “the erosion of the foundations of the post-war period and the destruction of international law were the result of bombs and missiles dropped by NATO on peaceful Yugoslav towns in 1999”. The statement, which was posted on Twitter on Tuesday by the Russian Embassy in Switzerland, ended with a call for Switzerland to show that its principle of neutrality is more than just “nice words”.
Meanwhile, the Tages-Anzeiger and the BBC both reported on the challenges of following the money from Russian oligarchs to Switzerland. The two media refer to documents from various data leaks revealing that a tattoo artist with a small business in Switzerland was able to shift around $200 million to companies owned by Suleyman Kerimov, who is on the US, EU and Swiss sanctions lists.
The Tages-Anzeiger confronted the tattoo artist from Lucerne, who referred the paper to his trustee, who is widely reported as a friend of Kerimov’s. The BBC writesExternal link that, “corporate records show how fake owners were used to heighten secrecy and that banks did not know exactly who was behind big US dollar transactions”.
The key takeaway from all the digging into records, says the BBC: it’s really challenging to enforce sanctions against oligarchs.
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Keeping a holiday home for a rainy day is becoming very unpopular
As many people head to the mountains or lakefronts for the Easter holiday weekend, they may be surprised to find hundreds of holiday homes with shutters closed and empty beds. The number of second homes that stay empty is astonishing in some villages.
The village of Sigriswil in the Bernese mountains has had enough of it though. According to a report by Swiss public television SRF there are around 900 second homes in the villageExternal link and only a sixth are rented out to third parties. This means that on average, the beds “stay cold” for more than 300 nights a year.
While this seems like a luxury problem, local authorities argue that empty homes aren’t good for the local community. Warm beds mean that there is an investment in the house. “It’s being renovated, cared for and if it’s just standing empty, at some point the house will go out of fashion,” says Edith Graf from Sigriswil Tourism office.
The reasons vary. In some cases, the homeowners don’t need the rental income. In other cases, owners don’t feel comfortable with strangers in their house. “I have my library here and in particular my grandmother’s stamp collection. I don’t want other people poking around here,” said one. Some say, however, that if there was a rental service that took care of all the cleaning, booking and billing they might be inclined to rent out their houses.
In 2019, the village created a service to help keep the “beds warm” and it is already reaping the rewards. Some 20 second homeowners started renting out their places. An interesting side-effect: the town caught 72 people falsely claiming their second home as their first.
The Grand Tour of Switzerland: “even more majestic than Roger Federer’s abs”
I wish I could say that I wrote that great comedic line, but we have Swiss Tourism to thank for that. Roger Federer, who is their official spokesperson, is back at the comedy after his last bit with Robert De NiroExternal link, which apparently became a viral hit with 50 million views – the most of any video on Switzerland Tourism’s YouTube channel.
This time, he’s paired up with actress Anne Hathaway, who travels with Federer around Switzerland’s most picturesque sites. I don’t want to spoil it though. You can check it out for yourself on YouTubeExternal link.
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