Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
The new King of Switzerland has a wreath and not a crown. He won the title in the sawdust and sacrificed a lot for it. Find out more about the new King of the Schwingers in today’s briefing.
We also talk about abortions, the lessons learnt from the Covid pandemic and interest rates.
Victory in the sawdust: nine years after his big defeat, Armon Orlik is crowned wrestling king – the first wrestler from Graubünden to do so without having taken part in the final round.
Switzerland has a new king, and his name is Armon Orlik. At the end of the seventh round, the 30-year-old had the same number of points as Samuel Giger and Werner Schlegel. They competed against each other in the final round of the Swiss Wrestling and Alpine Festival – but Orlik emerged as the overall winner.
A festival of superlatives thus comes to an end: 56,500 wrestling fans watched the final round in the mobile arena in Mollis on Sunday. Around 350,000 visitors travelled to the Glarus region over the entire weekend.
Orlik was in the final round at the 2016 Swiss Wrestling and Alpine Festival – which takes places every three years – but was unable to claim victory. Since then, he has trained even harder and has given up fast food and sweet drinks, 20 Minuten reports. The new wrestling king has also renounced the winning bull, Zibu, according to Blick. He opted for CHF30,000 ($37,500) instead.
In his life outside the sawdust, Orlik is a civil engineer. In true Swiss style, he announced that even as king he would get up early and go to work.
The Swiss parliament has decided that abortions will be covered by health insurance from 2027. Switzerland is thus bucking the international trend of making access to abortion more difficult.
At a time when women’s right to self-determination over their own bodies is coming under increasing pressure worldwide, Switzerland has taken a ground-breaking decision. In future, abortions will be free.
This decision was passed without significant debate in parliament and is part of a change in the law that stipulates that health insurance companies must cover all medical costs from the start of a pregnancy from 2027. This rule also applies to legal abortions, which can be carried out up to the 12th week.
The Tages-Anzeiger speaks of spectacular news and cites the US, Poland, Hungary and Argentina as “only the best-known examples” where the right to abortion is politically contested. Mattea Meyer, co-president of the left-wing Social Democratic Party, calls the decision a “milestone”. The centre-right Radical-Liberal Party, which is against new spending for cost reasons, did not oppose the decision either. One of the parliamentary opponents of abortion, Andreas Gafner, a parliamentarian from the ultra-conservative Christian party the Federal Democratic Union, said he had missed the deadline to force a discussion with a motion.
Dealing with the elderly and the young: the head of the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) admits mistakes during Covid and says what would be different in a future pandemic.
It’s not every day that a federal office admits mistakes. The head of the Federal Office of Public Health does so today in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). Anne Lévy took over the FOPH five years ago in the middle of the pandemic and is now learning lessons from the crisis.
She cites the handling of the older population during Covid as the biggest mistake. “They are the ones who were most vulnerable,” she said, adding that not everyone would have wanted a high level of protection behind closed doors in retirement and nursing homes. Some would have preferred to be able to see their loved ones for the rest of their lives, she said. “We didn’t listen enough to those affected,” she said. The measures could also have been relaxed more quickly for younger people, she added.
At the same time, Lévy referred to the revised Epidemics Act. The government must now first consult the cantons and the parliamentary commission when declaring or ending a special situation. The FOPH is also taking a step towards digitalisation: with the new law – expected by 2028 at the latest – it will no longer accept infection reports by fax.
While tenants can demand lower rents thanks to the fall in the reference interest rate, UBS is causing trouble with the introduction of negative interest rates for pension funds.
Finally, we come to interest rates. The mortgage reference interest rate in Switzerland has fallen from 1.50% to 1.25%, according to the Federal Office for Housing.
This is good news for tenants, writes Swiss public broadcaster, SRF. If their rent is based on an interest rate of 1.5% or more, they can apply for a rent reduction. According to analysts, the reference interest rate is likely to remain at this low level for the next one to two years.
The news for pension funds is less favourable. As SRF reports, UBS has been charging liquidity accounts -0.2% since mid-July because the Swiss National Bank has lowered the key interest rate to 0%. UBS is talking about a charge due to high regulatory requirements, but the impact on pension funds is the same – with possible consequences for the insured – because “every franc that is deducted from their pension will be missing from their pension in old age”.
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
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