The week in Switzerland
Dear Swiss Abroad,
It’s been another hot week in Switzerland – literally and politically. While a heatwave is smothering Europe and some Swiss children are being taught in swimming pools, relations between Switzerland and the United States are going from bad to worse.
The shock of being hit by a 39% tariff by the Trump administration continues to reverberate around Switzerland, with the international media struggling to find much sympathy.
“Coming of age in Switzerland is like sitting in an aquarium looking at the world through a thick bulletproof window,” wrote political scientist Joseph de Weck, who grew up in Zurich, in The Guardian on Wednesday. “That glass was shattered last week when Donald Trump announced 39% tariffs on Swiss exports.”
“A nation that has become accustomed to always getting its own way is now floundering, with a worse tariff rate than Algeria (30%),” wrote De Weck, a fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute. “In a multicultural, federal country with four official languages, the grand unifying narrative of Swiss exceptionalism is in tatters,” he concluded, having explained why, in the new era of cutthroat geoeconomics, Switzerland’s “have your cake and eat it” foreign policy doesn’t work anymore.
A day earlier, the Financial Times had come to a similar conclusion. “Trump’s tariffs expose weakness of Switzerland’s economic independence” was the headline of its analysis. “With no customs union, no US free trade agreement and limited bloc-level support, Switzerland has had to weather this tariff storm alone,” it pointed out.
“In the end, the country faces a difficult choice: offer politically sensitive concessions, seek a symbolic compromise, absorb the tariffs and adapt – or possibly wait Trump out,” the FT concluded. “But the deeper question may be this: has the country’s long-cherished independence – its regulatory sovereignty, neutrality, policy discipline – become a liability in today’s geopolitical economy?”
Separately, on Wednesday a survey found that almost two-thirds of Swiss were against offering concessions to the United States in the tariff dispute.
Further souring Swiss-US relations, the Swiss government admitted on Wednesday that Switzerland must pay the United States more than originally planned for 36 F-35 fighter jets.
It said the two countries hadn’t been able to reach an agreement regarding the fixed price of CHF6 billion ($7.5 billion) for the new planes. The US is sticking to its position – that the fixed price was a Swiss “misunderstanding” – which will result in additional costs of CHF650 million to CHF1.3 billion.
The news has split the political parties. Like the government, parties on the right want to stick with the purchase despite the additional costs. The left-wing Social Democratics and the Greens are calling for it to be cancelled.
Defence Minister Martin Pfister said one option now was to buy fewer aircraft of this type. Additional financing via a parliamentary loan was also conceivable, he said.
“The government needs a plan quickly – and the people must have the last word,” said an editorial in the Tages-Anzeiger. Paying more than CHF6 billion was a problem “not only for the state coffers, but also in terms of democracy”, it said. In 2020 the purchase was approved by just 50.1% of voters who “clearly set a maximum amount: CHF6 billion. Now the jets may cost over CHF1 billion more”.
In April two-thirds of respondents to a survey said they didn’t want to buy the F-35 fighter jets.
School has only just started again in Switzerland, at least in some cantons, but high temperatures across the country this week mean many classrooms are empty – teachers are hosing kids off in playgrounds or holding classes in forests, cellars and even swimming pools.
This isn’t without problems. “You can’t spend all your lesson time in the pool because you have to teach the subject matter,” Dagmar Rösler, president of the umbrella organisation of Swiss teachers, told Swiss public broadcaster, SRF, on Thursday.
Rösler believes that more is needed than well-intentioned cantonal recommendations, especially as periods of heat are likely to increase. “I’m in favour of paying a lot of attention to ventilation and air conditioning systems when new buildings are being constructed or existing school buildings are being renovated,” she said, calling for more planning at a federal level.
SolarStratos, a Swiss solar-powered aircraft, has completed the highest-ever solar-electric flight, its team claims.
Pilot Raphaël Domjan reached an altitude of 9,521 metres on Tuesday above Switzerland. The previous record was held by Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard and the Solar Impulse plane (9,235m).
The flight, which lasted five hours and nine minutes, departed from Sion airport in southwestern Switzerland and took advantage of the natural thermals provided by the Valais topography. The 9,521-metre mark must still be validated by the World Air Sports Federation.
The week ahead
An unusual sight in central Zurich on Sunday: the Bahnhofstrasse Association is celebrating its 70th birthday, with a 500-metre table stretching down one of Europe’s most expensive streets.
On Tuesday nudists will hand a petition, signed by around 700 people, to the Zurich city authorities. They are demanding that the Werdinsel, an island in the River Limmat just outside the city centre, be turned into a clothes-free zone.
Edited by Samuel Jaberg/dos
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