Switzerland Today
Hello from Bern, where the ‘historic’ Swiss accession to the UN Security Council is the story of the day. This and other news and updates in Thursday’s briefing.
In the news: Swiss parliament not interested in “oligarch taskforce”.
- Parliamentarians today rejected a motion to create a taskforce to hunt down sanctioned Russian assets in Switzerland. Left-wing parties said the CHF6.3 billion ($6.5 billion) blocked since the Swiss adoption of EU sanctions in March is just the tip of the iceberg, and that more needs to be done. The government and a majority of parliament said the current system, led by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, is doing a good job.
- The son of a top Indonesian politician has been found drowned in the River Aare in Bern. Emmeril Mumtadz, 22, had gone swimming on May 26 with two others before getting into difficulty and going missing. His body was found floating in the overflow basin of the Engehalde weir in the capital on Wednesday, cantonal police said. At the time of the accident last month, the two other swimmers were rescued by passers-by.
- The federal technology institute ETH Zurich remains the best non-English-speaking university in the world, according to this year’s QS ranking. However, like most of the Swiss unis in the global ranking, ETH lost ground, falling from eighth to ninth. The EPFL in Lausanne went from 14th to 16th. Globally, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) headed the list again, followed by Cambridge and Stanford.
Switzerland on the UN Security Council: a watershed moment.
Twenty years after joining the United Nations, Switzerland is officially to sit in its most important institution for the first time. Today, there were no awkward surprises in New York: 187 of 190 votes at the UN General Assembly approved the Swiss candidacy for a two-year seat on the Security Council, to start next year. The country will join nine other non-permanent members, as well as the five permanent veto powers (China, France, Russia, UK, and the US), all tasked with the modest job of “maintaining international peace and security” – in some cases by “authorising the use of force”.
A historic moment? Judging by the amount of media articles, tv coverage, public debates, left-right wrangles, parliamentary motions, and interviews in the past months, you’d think Switzerland had been single-handedly tasked with carrying the ring to Mordor. “It’s a beautiful day for our country; Switzerland is to take a seat in a legendary place,” former foreign minister Joseph Deiss told RTS radio this morning. Current foreign minister Ignazio Cassis, slightly less effusive, spoke last night of “an important chapter in Switzerland’s history”. Others reckon the end is nigh for the country’s fabled neutrality, already under pressure due to the Ukraine war; joining the Security Council is an “incalculable risk”, said Roger Köppel of the right-wing People’s Party in March.
But how incalculable – or how historic – is it? Can Switzerland even achieve anything on the body, or is the non-permanent seat just symbolic? As for domestic debates around independence and the Swiss role in the world – is it just navel-gazing? Or is the nation’s neutral soul going through a profound change? Questions too big for this briefing, but in our previous coverage we’ve explored some of them: along with the news from today’s vote, and the Swiss priorities for its two-year term, here you can find a series of features – not only about what Switzerland can bring to the Council, but what the Council can bring for Switzerland – and what it means for neutrality.
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Architect unhappy about Bernese refugee accommodation plans.
A project to build a “container village” on the outskirts of Bern to accommodate refugees from Ukraine has come in for harsh criticism from unexpected quarters. Not from a political party or gropu frowning upon the planned compound to house up to 200 people; rather from an architect, Ueli Salzmann, who has worked in the humanitarian field for years helping to set up refugee centres around the world on behalf of the UN, the Red Cross and the Swiss government. In today’s daily Der BundExternal link, and other publications of the Tages-Anzeiger group, Salzmann says the authorities have basically “got it all wrong” with their container village.
Not only does the project not meet minimal standards – because of the military-style layout, the narrow corridors, small rooms and sparse kitchens. There are also concerns about potential sexual assaults, he says, since men, women and children all have to use the same narrow passageways to access showers and toilets, including at night. And while the Bernese government has defended the compound, saying it consulted its own experts, the same criticism could also be heard elsewhere in the country, where similar temporary accommodations are planned – as an alternative for all those citizens who have opened their doors for refugees.
Read here our regular column about Viktoriia Bilychenko and her daughter Polina, two Ukrainians who found accommodation in Bern after fleeing the war.
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