Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Bigger, more polluting, yet no safer: the Swiss are buying more and more cars that consume a lot of fuel and take up a lot of urban space. Despite a slight decrease compared to 2023, the trend continues, with SUVs still accounting for 55.7% of new registrations in 2024.
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The Coalition for Responsible Multinationals has collected more than 287,000 signatures and submitted its text to the Federal Chancellery on Tuesday.
This second initiative for responsible multinationals provides for binding rules to oblige Swiss multinationals to respect human rights and environmental standards in their activities in Switzerland and abroad.
In 2020, a first initiative along these lines won a majority of voters (50.7%) but not a majority of Switzerland’s 26 cantons. The new initiative would apply to multinationals with 1,000 or more employees and sales of CHF450 million ($545 million) or more.
This second initiative is closely inspired by international standards in the field and the rules recently adopted by the EU. During the 2020 campaign, opponents argued that Switzerland should not go it alone but rather act in coordination with the EU.
The initiative was only launched at the beginning of the year, but the Coalition for Responsible Multinationals has already collected well over the 100,000 signatures required within 18 months. According to Dominique de Buman, former centrist parliamentarian and member of the initiative committee, the fact that the signatures have been collected so quickly clearly shows how strong public support for this cause is.
In Switzerland, victims of domestic violence still do not have an emergency number. The launch of the service has been postponed yet again, this time until May 2026.
Is the slowness of the Swiss procedure to blame? In April 2021 the then justice minister, Karin Keller-Sutter, presented the government’s roadmap for combating domestic violence and setting up a single national emergency number. The mandate was then given to the Conference of Cantonal Directors of Social Affairs, before the communications ministry joined the process in 2023.
Swisscom then stepped in and “managed to shorten the deadline to 11 months, compared with the 18 to 24 months usually required to bring such a number into service”, according to its spokeswoman Alicia Richon. The country’s 158 other operators (such as Sunrise and Salt) now need to be connected to this 142 number and 34,000 private networks need to be adapted.
Commissioning has been postponed once again, from November 2025 to May 2026. This delay puts the cantons in a “rather complicated situation”, according to Mathias Reynard, parliamentarian for Valais. Some have already hired staff and are in the process of training people, he said.
The Swiss are buying more and more SUVs (sport utility vehicles), despite their ecological and urban footprint. In 2024, these vehicles accounted for more than one in two registrations, according to an analysis by Comparis.
“Switzerland is one of the leaders of a global trend,” says Comparis. The German manufacturer BMW leads the way in registrations of this type of vehicle, followed by Audi and Skoda.
The subjective feeling of safety and the elevated position, comfortable for elderly people and families with children, are the main arguments in favour of SUVs.
“The fact that almost all the leading brands now offer electric SUVs is further stimulating development,” says Comparis electric mobility expert Jean-Claude Frick. However, the manufacture of these cars requires so many resources that they only become more environmentally friendly than combustion engine vehicles after several years of use.
In Geneva, an increasing number of tenants are having their leases terminated because of renovation work, leading to sharp rent rises. Tenants’ association Asloca is denouncing the growing number of such “renovation holidays”.
This practice, already widespread in Zurich, is now coming to French-speaking Switzerland. It consists of terminating flat leases because of renovation work. The properties concerned often have low rents compared with the market and have been occupied by their tenants for a long time.
“We were prepared to leave while the work was being carried out and to increase [the rent] by CHF500 ($600) to CHF600 a month,” says Carole-Anne Deschoux, who lives in Geneva and whose lease was terminated by her landlord. During the negotiations, she realised that the landlord was expecting a new rent of between CHF3,000 and CHF3,500, or “around 80-90% more”.
For the tenants’ association, unlike Zurich, Geneva has instruments in place to better counter this practice, notably the law on demolitions, conversions and renovations of residential buildings. For its part, the Geneva Real Estate Chamber says it is unaware of any such cases of termination and is surprised by the findings of Asloca. Canton Geneva, for its part, said it was using all the means at its disposal to guarantee access to housing.
Translated from French by DeepL/ts
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