Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Why are more and more Portuguese who live in Switzerland returning to Portugal? Why are the Swiss partly responsible for endangering several frog species in Indonesia, Turkey and Albania? All is revealed in Monday’s news briefing.
In the news: Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Migration says it received 24,511 asylum applications in 2022, without counting Ukrainians who are eligible for a special protection status.
- That figure is 9,583 more than the previous year. In addition, by the end of 2022 Switzerland had received 74,958 applications from Ukrainians seeking special protection status S, which allows Ukrainians fleeing the war to skip ordinary asylum procedures and grants them the right to reside and work in Switzerland.
- The 87-member Swiss Rescue unit deployed in Turkey was set to return to Switzerland today after completing its work in assigned disaster sites. The Swiss Rescue unit, along with the Redog rescue dog teams, rescued 42 people from the rubble. The focus of Swiss efforts will shift to humanitarian assistance. More than 37,000 people have died since the earthquake hit Turkey and Syria a week ago.
- The consumption of frogs’ legs in Switzerland and the EU has contributed to the decline of wild frog populations in an increasing number of supplier countries. Although all native frogs are protected in Switzerland, the import of live frogs for consumption of frogs’ legs is legal.
More and more Portuguese people living in Switzerland – old and young – are deciding to return to Portugal. They are the third-largest foreign community in Switzerland, after the Germans and Italians.
“Since 2017 we’ve noticed a negative migratory balance, which means that the number of departures exceeds the number of arrivals,” Liliana Azevedo, a researcher at the Lisbon University Institute (ISCTE) and herself a Portuguese-Swiss dual national, told Swiss public television, RTSExternal link, today.
Portuguese immigration to Switzerland occurred in several waves, with the first being in the 1980s. In the early 2000s a second wave was observed with the free-movement agreements. The economic crisis of 2008 forced many people out of Portugal, with immigration to Switzerland peaking in 2013. In the picture are Portuguese football fans in Lausanne, celebrating their country winning Euro 2016.
But since 2017, the Portuguese have been leaving Switzerland. Azevedo says it is normal that those who arrived with the economic crisis, between 2008 and 2013, are the first to return to their country. Then there are the first emigrants who arrived in the 1980s. “More and more people who reach retirement age are choosing to return home,” she says.
But why this phenomenon mainly affecting the Portuguese? Saudade, the feeling of melancholy and nostalgia “that inevitably draws people back to the country, doesn’t explain everything”, says Antonio Da Cunha, formerly a professor at the University of Lausanne and now head of the Federation of Portuguese Associations in Switzerland. Da Cunha has lived in Switzerland for more than 50 years and says several friends have chosen to return to Portugal, but not all of them. “Today, it’s a choice of quality of life, either in Portugal or in Switzerland,” he says.
Since 2017 the economic situation has improved in Portugal. While the unemployment rate was 17.1% in 2013, it had dropped to 6.6% by 2021. As a result, fewer Portuguese people are leaving their country.
The Kremlin critic and former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky says he is planning for a change of guard in the Kremlin. He is also critical of Switzerland’s position on the Ukraine war.
“I strongly criticised [Switzerland] when it wanted to maintain absolute neutrality,” Khodorkovsky said in an interview with Swiss newspaper Blick. “Even if it is not in the EU, it is part of the European area and cannot ignore European opinion – from a moral point of view.” He acknowledged, however, that Switzerland subsequently softened its stance, freezing Russian accounts and taking in Ukrainian refugees.
Journalists from Blick travelled to London to conduct the interview with Khodorkovsky, who still has a house in Switzerland. The former oil tycoon was imprisoned by the Putin regime for alleged corruption, and fled to Switzerland after release in 2013, before moving to London where he already had an office.
Asked what he wants Russia to look like “once Putin is gone”, Khodorkovsky replied that there were two paths. “One is the Yugoslav model, in which Russia would be divided into several states,” he told Blick. “That would be very dangerous and could lead to nuclear conflicts and new dictatorships. I favour the path of complete reconstruction and development into a parliamentary and federal model similar to Switzerland’s.” He said there was “a lot of support” for this model in Russian cities.
Last year SWI swissinfo.ch interviewed some of Putin’s opponents for a series.
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