Switzerland Today

Hello from Bern,

Where in this part of Switzerland, the “winter sports holidays” are coming to an end this weekend. In other cantons however they’re only beginning, which means plenty will be heading up to the mountains. We’ll be back with our next briefing on Monday.

This content was published on February 9, 2024 - 17:32

4 minutes

As part of the democracy team, I report on the dynamic relationship between citizens and their institutions in Switzerland and abroad. Born in Ireland, I have a BA in European Studies and MA in International Relations. I've been at SWI swissinfo.ch since 2017.

In the news: hostage incident, defence needs, and pandemic inequalities.

A man with an axe took 15 people hostage in a train in western Switzerland on Thursday evening, keeping them for four hours before police stormed the train and killed him. None of the hostages was injured. It’s not clear what the man wanted, but police say a terrorist motive is not likely (see below).
Swiss Defence Minister Viola Amherd says a trip to Estonia and Norway this week reinforced her conviction that Switzerland must strengthen its defence capabilities. The two states, both NATO members, expressed concern about the situation in Ukraine, Amherd said. Switzerland should learn from this and boost its armed forces, she thinks.
In 2020, the wealth held by the richest Swiss did not increase in proportional terms, the federal tax administration has said – despite fears that the pandemic would naturally lead to wider inequality. That said, the gulf between the rich and the rest is big: in 2020, the wealthiest 1% held 44.8% of net taxable wealth. The richest 10% held 77.8%.

train and police — © Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

Hostage-taking on Swiss regional train: many details still unclear.

The journey home for 15 people in canton Vaud on Thursday evening was a stressful one. Instead of the expected 35-minute train ride, they were held hostage by a man with an axe for four hours, until at 10.15pm, police – after fruitless negotiation efforts – stormed the train, killed the man, and released all the hostages unharmed. And it didn’t end there; for some, police depositions went on until around 5am this morning, Le Temps reports.

What did the attacker want? So far, a motive is unclear, police say, though they reckon a terrorist or jihadist cause is unlikely. The man, a 32-year-old Iranian who spoke broken English and Farsi, was reportedly an asylum seeker who came to Switzerland in 2022 – but initial information that he was assigned to canton Neuchâtel turned out later to be false, and many questions around his status remain to be answered.

Other questions likely to come up in the wake of the incident will no doubt be politically motivated, or about the organisation of the Swiss asylum system. As the Tages-Anzeigerwrote already todayExternal link, the climax of the police rescue – the shooting of the man – will also have to be clarified by an inquiry into whether the action was proportionate. The hostage-taker died on the spot; police said they acted according to the principle of self-defence.

coffee and coins — © Keystone / Cyril Zingaro

Asylum seekers in Switzerland – soon to go cashless?

Switzerland has long been seen as a country which loves physical cash – citizens are even set to vote in the next years on enshrining the principle of cash payments in the national constitution. However, there’s only so long modernity can be rejected, and times are also changing: boosted by the pandemic, the amount of consumer transactions carried out in cash plummeted from 70% in 2017 to 36% in 2023.

Is it in an effort to speed up this trend that right-wing politicians are now suggestingExternal link to shunt asylum seekers onto the cashless train? Inspired by a system being rolled out in Germany, the idea is to restrict asylum seekers – who currently receive their pocket-money from authorities in cash – to using special prepaid debit cards, not tied to a bank account, and which can be used to buy things but not to transfer money.

Rather than the goal of a cashless society, however, politicians are concerned about preventing money being sent back to asylum seekers’ homelands. The Swiss People’s Party, who plan to raise the idea in parliament, say it could discourage economic migrants from applying for asylum. Opponents say it would be bureaucratic, exclusionary, and ineffective – especially since asylum seekers have so little cash anyway; at the federal level, at least, they get CHF3 ($3.43) pocket money per day.