Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Yes to the electronic ID card and yes to the abolition of the imputed rental value: this is the prediction of the first SBC poll for the vote on September 28. However, the referendum campaign has only just begun.
In addition, controversy continues to surround the procurement of new fighter jets. An extension of the deployment of existing aircraft is also under discussion. Plus the Swiss head of the UN Palestinian Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has announced his resignation.
A yes vote is expected for both proposals in the federal referendum on September 28. Surprisingly, the Swiss Abroad show less support for the e-ID.
In the first trend survey by the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), 58% of respondents were in favour of abolishing the imputed rental value. The e-ID proposal was approved by 60%. The Swiss Abroad are more reserved: only 52% of expatriates are in favour of an e-ID.
This scepticism is surprising, as the Organisation of the Swiss Abroad supports the project and believes it would facilitate access to administrative services and the introduction of electronic voting. “The reserve of the Swiss Abroad may be influenced by their experience of e-ID in their host country,” surmises Martina Mousson, a political scientist from the gfs.bern institute, which conducted the survey.
Voting intentions among the base of political parties correspond to the party line, the poll shows. Only voters of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party clearly reject the project, while the others overwhelmingly approve of it. However, the referendum campaign and opinion-forming are only just beginning. Experience has shown that this can still influence the yes/no ratio.
Switzerland is in a cost overrun trap when it comes to procuring the new F-35 fighter jets. Is there a way out?
According to a report in Blick, Switzerland could keep the current F/A-18 fighter jets for longer and would therefore have more time to look for alternatives to the expensive F-35s.
Air force chief Peter Merz admitted at a meeting of the House of Representative’s security committee that the service life of the F/A-18 could “easily” be extended until 2037, giving Switzerland enough time to examine a European alternative to the US F-35 fighter jets, one committee member said.
The defence ministry responded to the Blick article as follows: “Without replacing the radar and sensors and without being equipped with a more powerful computer and other modernisations, the F/A-18 would no longer be a match for possible enemy fighter aircraft.”
Meanwhile, the House of Representative’s oversight committee is investigating those responsible. For years, former Defence Minister Viola Amherd said that the new fighter jets would be procured at “fixed guaranteed prices”. According to the Aargauer Zeitung, she is now one of the many central figures involved in the procurement of the fighter jets who have been summoned to clarify the origins of the additional costs. According to the defence ministry, these are between CHF650 million ($800 million) and CHF1.3 billion higher than the CHF6 billion earmarked for the project. Switzerland, for its part, has halved its payments.
Swiss national Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Palestinian Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), is stepping down at the end of March 2026 after two terms in office.
According to reports in the French-language newspapers Le Temps and Le Courrier, Lazzarini replied to a question about his future: “Two terms, I think that’s enough.”
According to Lazzarini, Israel’s current military offensive on Gaza means that we are further away from a two-state solution than ever before. The humanitarian situation is catastrophic, he said: every third child in Gaza is suffering from malnutrition, and without rapid aid, many children will die. “It’s a conflict in which we will soon have seen everything, a dystopian world,” Lazzarini said.
UNRWA is also under intense pressure, as Israel accuses it of having links to Islamist groups and is blocking humanitarian aid convoys. Several donor countries, including the US, have suspended their payments, which has plunged UNRWA into an existential financial crisis and made it considerably more difficult to help the refugees.
The Gösgen nuclear power plant will remain out of operation for another six months. The annual overhaul originally planned for around one month has therefore been significantly extended.
The Gösgen nuclear power plant is not due to go back into operation until the end of February 2026. Extensive inspections and reinforcements to the feedwater system are taking longer than expected. However, serious damage has been ruled out. A pipe burst in the non-nuclear part of the plant can be “practically ruled out” for the next few decades thanks to the good condition of the pipes, writes Blick.
According to SRF News, the plant generates around eight billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year, covering around 13% of Switzerland’s electricity consumption. The outage will cause financial losses of several hundred million Swiss francs for the two energy companies Alpiq and Axpo, which purchase electricity from the nuclear power plant.
The City of Zurich, as a shareholder, is also affected. One of the consumers of electricity from the Gösgen nuclear power plant is the Elektrizitätswerk der Stadt Zürich (EWZ). The EWZ will only be able to estimate the extent to which its finances will be affected by the Gösgen outage at the end of the year “once the operating costs of the Gösgen nuclear power plant are known at the end of the year and the prices at which we had to procure electricity on the market”, the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA quotes a spokesperson as saying.
Edited by Balz Rigendinger. Translated from German by DeepL/ts
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