Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
It’s the day after… and everyone seems to be chewing over the results of Sunday’s federal elections, which saw a shift to the right with the Swiss People’s Party taking 28.6% (+3%) of the vote.
My colleague Matt Allen has the latest on what the foreign press are saying. And we have more on a striking development this year: fewer female parliamentarians have been elected, ending a recent upward trend.
Read the latest on the federal elections and other Swiss news.
In the news: Roche invests, Geneva demo, bomb hoaxes in France and Swiss woman dies in India
- Around 600 people demonstrated in Geneva on Sunday afternoon calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas. Several relatives of those kidnapped were present.
- The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that a Swiss woman died in India. No further information was provided by the ministry but according to Indian media, an Indian man allegedly murdered the woman after she rejected his marriage proposal.
- Pharma giant Roche plans to pay $7.1 billion (CHF6.35 billion) to acquire the holding company Telavant, which is currently developing RVT-3101, a promising new therapy for treating inflammatory bowel disease.
- Nearly 70 fake bomb alerts have targeted French airports since October 18. The vast majority of the hoaxes have originated from the same email address located in Switzerland, according to French Transport Minister Clément Beaune.
Foreign media unpacks Swiss election results.
The foreign press has been watching closely the federal elections and trying to decipher Sunday’s results, where the People’s Party was the main victor at the ballot box, and the biggest losers were the two Green parties.
“The elections confirm a resurgence of populists at the ballot box across Europe,” saysExternal link the Financial Times, which is among a number of media outlets to point to a shift to the right in several other countries, such as Italy, Austria, Germany and Finland.
Coronavirus, the war in Ukraine and renewed violence in the Middle East may have all played a part in influencing Swiss voters, sayExternal link the papers.
“As a result of the corona pandemic and the geopolitical upheavals, climate protection has again taken a back seat in the public’s consciousness. In these politically and economically uncertain times, more Swiss people have turned to conservative forces again,” notes the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany.
The French newspaper Le Monde says the People’s Party took full advantage during its election campaign, which “focused on its favourite theme: the fight against ‘mass immigration’ and the prospect of the Swiss population reaching 10 million”.
CNBC said voters in Switzerland, like other parts of Europe, have made their choice between conflicting issues.
“The Swiss vote showed another slice of the European electorate thinking about how to balance the appeal of right-wing populist politics and the need to spend money and resources to fight global warming at a time of rising inflation that has pinched many pocketbooks — even in well-to-do Switzerland.”
Fewer women elected to new Swiss parliament.
After a steady increase since 1971, the proportion of women elected to the House of Representatives fell in Sunday’s Swiss federal elections. Of the 200 new parliamentarians elected, 38.5% are women, down from 42% in 2019.
The Federal Statistical Office said 77 women were elected to the House of Representatives, compared to 84 in 2019. This year’s decline follows a steady upward trend over the past 52 years. In 1971, the share of female parliamentarians did not surpass 5%. This figure gradually increased, rising to 17.5% in 1991, 26% in 2003 until the recent peak in 2019.
Alliance F, a women’s group that promotes female participation in Swiss politics, tried to put the numbers in perspective saying such a decline was expected. 2019 saw a sharp increase in women in politics of almost 10%, it noted.
Alliance F says the decline can be explained by the composition of the electoral lists. The People’s Party, the big winner on Sunday, had proposed the fewest women candidates (25% on its list). Of the 21 new People’s Party politicians elected to the House of Representatives, only three are women. In addition, several female Green parliamentarians lost their seats on Sunday. Despite this, the proportion of women has remained fairly stable, which is positive, according to Flavia Kleiner from Alliance F.
She highlighted efforts made by The Centre, whose lists were far more gender-balanced (43% women) than in 2019 (37%). As a result, four of the party’s seven newly elected members are women. But Kleiner says special efforts are needed by the Radical-Liberals and the People’s Party to draw more women into politics.
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