Switzerland Today
Hello from Bern,
Where temperatures have been back below zero for a few days now, after a premature start to spring in early February. It’s much too early for the dreaded Ice Saints, so maybe we’re in for a “March-winter”. But first the news.
In the news: bad marks for Credit Suisse, online anti-Semitism, and wind.
- The Swiss financial regulator FINMA has ordered Credit Suisse to overhaul its risk management structures in the fallout of the collapse of Greensill Capital. Credit Suisse made “partly false and overly optimistic” statements to FINMA regarding its exposure to Greensill, the regulator said today. Credit Suisse has so far been able to recover $7.4 billion of the $10 billion it invested in the supply chain financing company.
- The number of anti-Semitic incidents in Switzerland rose by 6% in 2022, with the vast majority of them happening online, Jewish groups said today. The authors of an annual report specifically mentioned the messaging app Telegram as a major source of incidents. “Sub-cultures obsessed with conspiracy theories” are particularly active on the app, they say. Anti-Semitic abuse rose particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Swiss wind power plants produced 153 gigawatt hours of electricity in 2022, up 5% on the 2021 and more than ever before, the Suisse Eole association said today. Most of this was produced in the winter months, when nearly two-thirds of wind power is generated. Wind and sun and other “new renewable” sources now make up 11.5% of the energy mix in the country, where hydropower dominates.
Switzerland and Iran: police brutalities and diplomatic niceties.
Switzerland’s relations with Iran, which for years have been based on close diplomatic cooperation (Switzerland represents Iranian interests towards the US, for example), have been under the spotlight since protests began in the Middle East state last year. While the EU introduced sanctions due to police repression, Switzerland has held back. Yesterday however, parliamentarians led by a centre-left majority passed a declaration urging the government to do more. And as we reported on Friday, the foreign ministry has also been under fire after the Swiss ambassador was pictured last week wearing a traditional chador in a Shiite Islamic city in Iran – an appearance since defended by foreign minister Ignazio Cassis.
What’s the outlook for Swiss-Iran relations in the wake of the protests and growing domestic pressure? Read our report from Bern today.
Cocoa: redistributing the sweetest spoils of the chocolate market.
When it comes to the $113 billion global chocolate market, the value chain moves clearly from south to north: countries like Ivory Coast produce a lot beans, countries like the Netherlands (and other EU states, and the US) dominate the lucrative processing side of things, then countries like Switzerland eat lots of it (the Alpine Nation is the world’s biggest eater of chocolate per capita). But as our ongoing West Africa cocoa series outlines, producer countries are trying to change this. In Ivory Coast, which grows some 43% of global beans, a range of state subsidies and incentives is trying to boost the higher-margin processing industry, in order to bring more profits to those closest to the source.
In part five of the series published today, we look at how successful the country has been in moving up the cocoa value chain, and what this might mean for producers and chocolate-makers in Europe.
Mexico and Switzerland: democracies with different back-stories.
In Switzerland, direct democracy – the ability of citizens to use political instruments to check the power of elected politicians – is firmly anchored, both in the institutions and mentalities of the country. On the other side of the Atlantic in Mexico, many such tools are also present, but they are less widely used. As one contributor to our new series on the Mexico-Switzerland democracy link says: “Participatory democracy in Mexico is being born in a rather tumultuous fashion, like everything that is born here.” What’s the outlook for people power in the North American nation? In collaboration with the Mexican online news site Animal Político, our focus tries to find out.
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