Switzerland Today

Hello from Bern,

Where the summer news drought is increasingly being filled by reports of actual droughts – this and the rest of the day’s stories in Thursday’s briefing.

© Keystone / Christian Beutler

In the news: airline profits, ambassadorial shifts, and refugee jobs

• Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) announced today an operating profit of CHF67 million ($69.9 million) for the first six months of 2022, driven by “sizeable booking demand and the improved profitability provided by its completed restructuring activities”. It’s the first time the airline has moved into the black since the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year, it lost CHF427.7 million.
• Recently-dismissed Ukrainian prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova is mooted to become her country’s new ambassador to Switzerland. Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba confirmed the candidacy – yet to be ratified – in an interview with state news agency Ukrinform on Wednesday. At the request of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s parliament dismissed Venediktova from her post as prosecutor general in mid-July.
• Almost 10% of eligible Ukrainian refugees in Switzerland have found a job, the State Secretariat for Migration said on Thursday. Overall, 3,130 have found employment thanks to the special S protection status that allows them to live and work in Switzerland for a year. Nearly a quarter (23%) are in the restaurant industry; 17% are in the “planning, consulting, and IT” sector, while agriculture and education each account for 8%.

Keystone / Peter Klaunzer

Texts for nothing – authorities publish vaccine contracts

Writer Samuel Beckett, annoyed with the inadequacy of language, once had a character complain: “you would do better, at least no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words until all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what it is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery”. It’s unclear how many Beckett readers there are in the Federal Office for Public Health (FOPH); but the ministry could have had the quote in mind yesterday when it made publicExternal link the contracts made with Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers over the past two years.

The transparency efforts were offset by the fact that many of the (many) hundreds of pages of the contracts were illegible: words, sentences, paragraphs, and even whole pages were blacked out – in the case of one agreement with Pfizer, 27 consecutive pages were black, the NZZ writesExternal link, making it an expensive document to print. What was missing? All the “most interesting information”, according to the NZZ; any details that would compromise the obligation to “protect the manufacturer’s professional, trade, and manufacturing secrets”, according to the FOPH.

Concretely, titbits like unit price, liability in terms of possible side-effects, and how long the secrecy obligation remains in force, were all absent. And while the FOPH says this is in line with the freedom of information act, critics complainedExternal link to SRF television that it’s not in the public interest to hide such things; tabloid Blick rebaptised the FOPH as the “ministry of secrets”. However: on the question of whether these missing details really are in the people’s interest, the representatives of the people at least think not; last year parliament rejected the idea of making the documents public.

© Keystone / Jean-christophe Bott

Cows – roasting on the mountains

As mentioned almost daily in this briefing recently, it’s very hot in Switzerland. Today is no different: the third official heat wave of the summer is squatting on the country, and there’s no rain in sight. And while this is annoying (and potentially dangerous) for humans, it’s also not ideal for Switzerland’s second-most important species. Cows, which suffer too, are not only overheating, but are also lactating less, which means less milk, less cheese, and less income for farmers – some of whom have installed fans and misters in stables, RTS reportsExternal link today.

In the mountains the situation is trickier again. In difficult-to-access meadows, water is lacking and the grass is scorched and inedible. Le Temps writesExternal link that some farmers are starting to bring cattle back down from their summer pastures ahead of the usual Autumn descent – an “unprecedented” move for the centuries-old tradition of seasonal alternation between valley and mountain. Others have turned to the army for help: canton Fribourg yesterday asked the forces to muster helicopters to bring water to isolated areas; in central canton Obwalden, this is already happening.