Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
In the midst of a trade war, China and the United States are ready to sit down and negotiate. And it is Switzerland that will have the honour of hosting this meeting. Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter, who holds the rotating Swiss presidency this year, has made it clear that the government will provide the venue for the meeting but will not be involved in the content of the discussions. Switzerland will nevertheless have a role to play…
The first high-level talks between China and the United States will be held in Geneva in the next few days, Washington and Beijing announced yesterday. A good opportunity for Switzerland to make its case.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng will meet in Switzerland this weekend to negotiate tariffs. It will be the first time that representatives of the two superpowers have faced each other since US President Donald Trump announced substantial tariffs on Chinese products. China retaliated, prompting further retaliation from Washington.
“My sense is that this is going to be a de-escalation, not a major trade agreement. But we have to defuse the situation before we can move forward,” Bessent said on Fox News. China, for its part, affirmed that it would not “sacrifice its position of principle” and would defend “justice”.
Bessent is also due to meet Karin Keller-Sutter, who will take advantage of this diplomatic ballet on Swiss soil to plead the cause of Switzerland, which could be one of the countries most affected by the American customs duties. The US is Switzerland’s biggest export country.
Switzerland is alarmed by the latest developments in Gaza, the foreign ministry tweeted yesterday. The European Union has also reacted. This at a time when an Israeli minister has warned that the Palestinian territory will be “entirely destroyed”.
The foreign ministry reiterated that Switzerland demanded “full respect” for international law, an immediate return to a ceasefire and the release of all hostages. It also stresses that this law prohibits the annexation of occupied territories and the displacement of the population, and that humanitarian aid must be able to reach civilians.
The EU’s head of diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, described the situation in Gaza as “untenable”. “Humanitarian aid must resume immediately and should never be politicised,” Kallas posted on X. For its part, the UN has accused Israel of using humanitarian aid as a weapon of war, by sending bombs rather than food and water.
The Israeli government has announced a plan to “conquer” the Gaza Strip. In response, the Palestinian militant group Hamas said there was no longer any point in negotiating a truce with Israel. Israel, which has been besieging the 2.4 million inhabitants of Gaza since March 2, has banned all humanitarian aid from entering the enclave.
Bern and Brussels disagree! The European Commission considers the agreements negotiated with Switzerland to be a single package, while the Swiss government defends a different position.
All the agreements and protocols were negotiated as a package and the negotiations were concluded accordingly, a European Commission spokesperson told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-ATS yesterday. As far as Brussels is concerned, all the agreements will come into force as soon as the ratification processes have been completed on both sides.
The Swiss government, however, does not see things the same way. Last week, it announced it would submit the negotiated agreements to parliament in four federal decrees. According to the government, it is therefore possible that one or more agreements could be rejected by parliament or the people and not come into force.
After a decade of tumultuous negotiations, Switzerland and the European Union finally reached an agreement to stabilise their relations in December. However, the agreement is not yet sealed. The government is due to open a consultation phase before the summer, and parliament will have to vote on it in the next few years.
Duolinguo, the language-learning app created by Swiss-born Severin Hacker, has angered its users by banking on artificial intelligence (AI).
From now on, new recruits will only be allowed at Duolingo once the teams have proved that they cannot automate their work any further. At the end of April, the company announced that it wanted to work according to the “AI first” principle.
Since this announcement, a storm of criticism has descended on the language-learning platform, reports 20 Minuten. Some users of the application have even announced on X that they are cancelling their subscriptions or deleting the app, deploring the fact that Duolingo places machines above humans.
“The course is horrible, full of word-for-word translations and horrible sentences. You can see it straight away: it hasn’t been checked by someone who really knows Swedish,” laments one user on the Reddit platform, who claims that you can already tell when learning Swedish that the sentences come from an artificial intelligence.
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