Switzerland Today
Greetings from Lausanne!
The May 15 vote is over. Three important decisions for Swiss society - Frontex, organ donations and Lex Netflix - passed with relatively large majorities – and calmly. These represented successes for the Federal Council and parliament. And what a contrast to recent ballot agitation over the Covid certificate or anti-pesticide initiatives, for example.
“Those were fights rather than debates,” as the Le Temps newspaper wrote today in an editorial. “This time democracy is the big winner.” The only regret was low voter turnout (40%).
In the news: helping Sri Lankans trace their roots, the state of Swiss forests and finding out where imported gold comes from.
- The Bern-based Society for Threatened Peoples announced today that it is appealing against a recent Swiss court decision in favour of four big gold refineries that were under pressure to disclose their gold suppliers. For years the NGO has been urging the authorities to reveal the origin of imported to Switzerland.
- The French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala has lost his appeal against a 2021 conviction for racist content during performances in Switzerland, which included denying the existence of Nazi gas chambers.
- The summer holiday season looks set to be very busy for the owners of holiday apartments and campsites in Switzerland. In addition to Swiss guests, who are allegedly more likely to take a holiday in their own country than before the pandemic, foreign visitors are due to return, says the sector’s umbrella organisation, Parahotellerie Suisse. Many campsites are already booked up for the high season, with reservations up 241% compared with summer 2019.
- The Swiss government will help people adopted from Sri Lanka up until the 1990s search for their birth families under a pilot project launched after a scandal over child traffickers sending stolen children to Europe. An agreement was signed todayExternal link in Bern between the authorities and the Back to the Roots organisation.
- Swiss forests are under severe pressure due to too much nitrogen, acidic soil and drought, according to a new study carried out in 190 areas in eight cantons. In addition to these problems, a fungus is also attacking ash trees.
Half of all new vehicles in Switzerland should be rechargeable models by the end of 2025.
The number of new electric cars sold in Switzerland continues to accelerate. Mobility and electric cars also feature in the government’s proposed new environment law, presented last December, which aims to halve Switzerland’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.
The density of public charging infrastructure in Switzerland is about the European average, but Switzerland still lags behind in private charging infrastructure, say experts.
To help ramp up the development of electric vehicles in Switzerland, government and industry officials have signed an agreementExternal link on a roadmap that lays out new long-term targets.
By the end of 2025, half of new vehicle models should be rechargeable (100% electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids). This figure currently stands at 25%. The second goal is to raise the number of public charging stations from 7,150 to 20,000.
A goal has also been set to achieve “user-friendly and network-supported charging at home, at the workplace or on the road”.
Should the Swiss army dust off its old Leopard tanks?
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has challenged perceptions of defence policy and sparked intense debate in neutral Switzerland about whether military spending is enough to meet increased security threats.
The impact of the war was on many parliamentarians minds last week when the House of Representatives voted to increase the army’s budget from CHF5.6 billion ($5.7 billion) a year to around CHF7 billion. But it is not over, as the Senate has yet to debate the issue.
But how would this extra money actually be spent by the army? A recent documentaryExternal link by the Mise au Point team on Swiss public TV, RTS, examines this question.
RTS journalists visited a secret Swiss army storage depot where around 100 old Leopard tanks, originally purchased from Germany in 1984, have been stored, unused since the end of the Cold War. With the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, some parliamentarians on the right argueExternal link that some of the tanks should be dusted off and reutilised in Switzerland. However, others dismiss this idea as “absurd”; renovating 32 tanks could cost an estimated CHF350-450 million.
Sunday’s “yes” vote to Frontex signals Swiss attachment to Schengen.
On Sunday, seven out of ten Swiss voters gave their backing to a parliamentary decision to increase Switzerland’s contribution to the European Frontex border agency.
This vote marks Switzerland’s clear attachment to the European Union’s passport-free Schengen zone, according to most Swiss newspapersExternal link. However, it does not represent a blank cheque for the European border agency, which will have to reform, editorials agree.
The Frontex vote shows that the Swiss are attached to the Schengen area, from which Switzerland risked being excluded in the event of a refusal, wrote the La LibertéExternal link newspaper.
The population knows that it owes freedom of travel within the European space and security to this agreement. The risk of losing Schengen was therefore too great, said the 24 HeuresExternal link and Tribune de GenèveExternal link papers. Voters did not want to “take the risk that Switzerland could be excluded from this crucial collaboration, on an issue as global as migration”, added Le TempsExternal link.
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