Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
On World Press Freedom Day, we celebrate the right to express ourselves freely, without fear, and yet not in any old dialect we want (see second section below).
In the news: freedom of the press, Swiss-Taiwan ties, and UBS background.
- Switzerland has ranked 12th in an annual press freedom survey by the Reporters Without Borders group. The index, published to coincided with World Press Freedom Day today, says Switzerland improved slightly following the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, but that problems around press diversity and freedom of journalists to report on the banking sector remain. Norway was top of the ranking.
- Swiss parliamentarians voted in favour of strengthening relations with their counterparts in Taiwan. The motion passed by the House of Representatives on Tuesday aims to boost democracy, promote peace, and generally deepen bilateral exchanges; it follows a February visit to Taipei by a five-member Swiss-Taiwan parliamentary friendship group, which was criticised by China.
- UBS reportedly concluded in February that buying rival Credit Suisse was not desirable, but that it should prepare in case the bank encountered “serious financial difficulties”. In a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, dated April 26, UBS said it had been mulling the potential impact of a deal since December, Reuters wrote today. The historic CHF3 billion deal was made on March 19.
Dialect of the deaf in parliament.
Not satisfied with merely disagreeing with each other in four national languages, some Swiss parliamentarians yesterday demandedExternal link (RTS television reports) the right to do it in dialect as well. Lukas Reimann from the People’s Party’s raised a motion to make the various forms of Swiss German an official language for debates – as is already the case in some cantonal parliaments. Dialects are symbolic and character-forming, Reimann said – “nothing else is a better expression of the diversity of our country”. For an overwhelming majority of his colleagues however, too much diversity would only cause headaches; especially when it comes to transcribing and simultaneously interpreting all these regional variations. The idea was rejected by 164 votes to 20.
Struggling Swiss retiree sees a dip in fortunes.
Switzerland is a wealthy country with a very good standard of living, but the poverty rate is creeping upwards, the Federal Statistical Office said yesterday. Yet just how serious the situation is only became clear today, when Forbes magazine’s 2023 list of the world’s richest sports stars revealed that recently-retired Roger Federer had slipped to ninth – down two spots on last year. Federer’s struggles will no doubt be familiar to many pensioners in Switzerland, one in five of whom lives below or close to the poverty line, as we reported earlier this year. King Roger should still be ok however: while he dropped in the ranking, his overall earnings actually went up last year, from $90-$95 million.
Gun violence: Zurich case puts problems in perspective.
While the Tages-Anzeigerreports todayExternal link (paywall) on the scourge of gun violence in the US, the Neue Zürcher Zeitungwrites aboutExternal link (also paywall) a man in Zurich who used his weapons to tackle another scourge. According to the paper, the man’s gun collection, including a hunting rifle, air rifle, pistols and silencer, were seized last year after he had driven into a public car-park and shot a pigeon through the sunroof. He also shot a few further pigeons on a farm, heard an appeals court, which upheld the decision to take the man’s guns away. His motivations for shooting the pigeons were not clear from the NZZ article; maybe, like the local authorities, he was simply trying to take some action to curb the 16,000-strong local population in Zurich.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
