Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
A derailed train near Goppenstein and vandalism at Lausanne station are – in addition to the snow – causing many cancellations on the Swiss public transport network.
But you, dear Swiss Abroad, are also making the headlines today: numerous countries are tempting you with attractive offers so that you can spend your retirement on exotic shores.
Best wishes from Bern.
Switzerland is an expensive place to live. More and more people are turning their backs on the country – having done the maths. Whether people from Ticino or pensioners: the border seems to be increasingly becoming a lifeline to maintain their standard of living financially.
In canton Ticino, more and more locals are moving to Italy, where housing costs only half as much. However, they are keeping their jobs: according to Swiss public broadcaster RSI, 22% of those moving away are former residents who now commute to Ticino as cross-border workers.
In Panama or Dubai, senior citizens are not seen as a burden, but as “economic promoters”, the NZZ am Sonntag writes. With tax exemptions and discounts on hotels and flights, the 60+ generation is becoming the coveted growth engine of a global billion-dollar business.
The number of emigrants over the age of 60 has almost doubled since 2012. In Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Paraguay, a pension of $850 a month and a clean criminal record are often enough for a lifelong visa, according to Blick. And in Dubai, the visa process sometimes only takes seven days. Today’s retirees no longer seem to choose their place of residence based on nostalgia, but purely on market criteria.
Two events, one result: a standstill in the train system. While an avalanche derailed a train in canton Valais and caused several injuries, a single flare set off by a football fan in Lausanne paralysed the most important railway junction in French-speaking Switzerland.
In Goppenstein in canton Valais, a regional express train was derailed by an avalanche on Monday morning. The police reported five injuries; around 30 passengers were evacuated. Rail services on the Goppenstein-Brig line will be restricted until at least 4am on Tuesday, it was reported.
Later on Sunday evening, 40 cables of points and signals burnt out at Lausanne station after football fans threw pyrotechnics onto the railway system. The fire was quickly extinguished, but the repair is extremely complex: around 1,000 connections have to be checked. Massive delays had to be expected and replacement buses were used.
According to Le Temps, the incident reveals the lack of redundancy in the system. Without the Lausanne-Renens connection, massive detours via Biel/Bienne are necessary. According to reports, this closure will apparently also last until 4am on Tuesday. As in Tolochenaz in 2021, the Swiss rail network has hardly any buffer for major disruptions.
Swiss cowbells in Moscow and manipulated SRF pages also made the headlines today. What do they have in common? According to two experts, they appear to be tools of a Russian strategy to weaken Swiss democracy.
Russia’s state broadcaster RT DE is using fake screenshots of Swiss public broadcaster SRF to stir up support for the “CHF200 is enough!” initiative, which wants to reduce the annual licence fee of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) from CHF335 to CHF200. This also affects Swissinfo. The initiative will be put to the vote on March 8.
The fact that a foreign medium is intervening so directly in the Swiss referendum campaign shows that Switzerland’s direct democracy is now part of a global information war. The initiative committee has distanced itself from the accusations in the Russian article.
According to Ulrich Schmid, professor of Russian Culture and Society at the University of St Gallen, Russia’s aim is to sow distrust of quality media, he told the Tages-Anzeiger. By focusing on emotional topics such as neutrality, RT (formerly Russia Today) aims to deepen social rifts. Declining trust is the breeding ground in which authoritarian narratives thrive best, he said.
Meanwhile, Swiss “friendship activists” in Moscow called for normal relations with Russia with a noisy march to the Swiss embassy. They served the Kremlin as “useful naive people”, said social scientist Marko Ković, who researches conspiracy theories, in Der Bund. Images of Swiss cowbells are worth their weight in gold for propaganda in order to stage an alleged rift between Western governments and their populations.
Drones are far more than just a toy for holiday photos or a weapon of war. But where do you test drones designed to blast avalanches or maintain electricity pylons? Canton Uri now wants to become an Alpine test laboratory for drones – with global ambitions.
Have you ever been to canton Uri, with its narrow valleys? The Alpine Drone Consortium now wants to use the rugged topography of the Alpine canton as a test bed, the Urner Zeitung reports. The logic is simple: if you can fly safely here, you can do it anywhere. It is the decisive step from the protected laboratory to the unpredictable reality of the Swiss Alps.
For the Avalanche Institute SLF, “drones have revolutionised work”, as they provide data from steep rock faces, for example. However, the legal hurdles are slowing things down: the Federal Office of Civil Aviation classifies the project as “ambitious”, as authorisations for split test zones are highly complex from a legal perspective.
Uri is deliberately positioning itself as an “innovation biotope for drone technology”. The aim is to use the test zones to attract drone manufacturers and new jobs to the mountains in the long term, SRF News quotes Urban Camenzind, Uri’s director of economic affairs.
Translated using AI/ts
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