Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Today's Swiss news looks back at a weekend rich in emotions with the end of the Winter Olympic Games. The 2026 Olympics were a very good year for the Swiss.
The other big event is the continuation – never the end – of the tariff saga in the United States with a Supreme Court decision and new announcements by Donald Trump. For the authorities and the Swiss media, the watchword is "wait and see" as the evolution of the situation is unclear.
Happy reading!
The Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics have come to a close. The closing ceremony took place on Sunday evening in the Verona Arena. For Switzerland, this 2026 edition will be remembered; Never before have the Swiss athletes won so many medals.
This Monday, the Swiss media are generally raving about the performances of the Swiss delegation, which won six gold, nine silver and eight bronze medals. This total of 23 medals is a new record, the previous one being 15. With such a result, “expectations have been exceeded,” says chef de mission Ralph Stoeckli.
With three gold medals, Alpine skier Franjo von Allmen is the Swiss star of these Olympics. “If we had to remember only one name, it would be his,” commented RTS Sport. These Olympics also had other exploits and nice surprises in store: Mathilde Gremaud, who retained her title in slopestyle; Marco Odermatt’s three medals in alpine skiing; the Swiss bobsleigh, which has returned to the podium after years of drought; a medal for the women’s hockey team; a medal in ski jumping several years after Simon Amman’s exploits; or the feat of cross-country skier Nadja Kealin, who won bronze in the hardest event of the Olympics, the 50 km in classic style.
But these Olympics were also accompanied by some regrets for the Swiss. Mixed successes included silver in women’s curling and bronze in men’s curling, when the Swiss teams could legitimately claim more. Even worse was the cruel disappointment of the men’s hockey team, which lost to Finland in the quarter-finals when it was still leading 2-0 with six minutes left in regulation. It was also a grimace for Swiss women’s alpine skiing, which suffered a collective shipwreck by winning only a silver medal in the slalom.
Swiss artist Peter Stämpfli, a pioneer of European pop art, is no more. He died, aged 88, on Friday in Paris. Born in 1937 near Bern, he had discovered American Abstract Expressionism at a very young age, a revelation that led him to move to Paris in 1959 to pursue his artistic career.
In the 1960s, Stämpfli established himself as a singular figure of pop art, developing a visual language centred on the automobile and especially the tyre, which he isolated on a white background to underline its graphic structure. This motif gradually became the major focus of his work, which was exhibited in major institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Versatile, he has also made experimental films and monumental sculptures.
Proof of Stämpfli’s importance in the contemporary art world: the news of his death was widely relayed in the international media. “He got more tributes in the newspapers than I would have thought, but it must be said that it was always the same newswire,” notes culture journalist Etienne Dumont in the magazine Bilan. The newswire is nevertheless laudatory and stresses that the Swiss was “one of the most singular artists of the second half of the 20th century”.
The saga of US tariffs seems far from over and the weekend saw several developments. It all started on Friday, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a large part of the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump. The judges ruled that the American president could not invoke a national emergency linked to an external threat to impose unilateral surcharges.
Trump reacted sharply, calling the decision “ridiculous, poorly drafted and extremely un-American”. But the president does not intend to give up his policy. On Friday, he signed a new decree introducing a global customs duty of 10%, before raising this rate to 15% the next day. This decree is due to come into force on Tuesday for a period of 150 days, with sectoral exceptions, notably for the pharmaceutical industry.
Swiss authorities reacted cautiously to the Supreme Court’s decision. The Federal Council simply said it “took note“, without further comment. Bern is analysing the concrete consequences of the decision and is waiting for clarifications from Washington. Currently, Switzerland is provisionally subject to a rate of 15%, like the EU. Negotiations are underway to reach a long-term agreement.
The Federal Council now has three options: to continue negotiations in order to secure a stable agreement, to stall while waiting for new American legal basis, or to take a firmer line. Coincidentally, it was precisely on Monday that a delegation of Swiss parliamentarians flew to Washington. Its mission: to plead Switzerland’s case with a view to obtaining a satisfactory agreement.
Some Swiss companies, on the other hand, are not adopting the caution of the Swiss authorities and are demanding a refund of the customs surcharges that have hit them. Stöckli (skiing), Logitech (IT) and CL international (luxury goods) have already taken steps and other companies such as Breitling (watches) and Läderach (chocolate) have announced their intention to request a refund. In theory, the Supreme Court’s invalidation could force the Trump administration to repay some $175 billion in undue customs revenue. But the process promises to be very long and complicated.
The lack of housing is a growing problem in Switzerland. However, the country could house an additional million people, according to a recent study by Raiffeisen Bank. To achieve this, it would be sufficient to exploit unused building land.
The study estimates that 9 to 16% of land that is already classified as a building zone is not exploited. This may seem strange in a country that lacks housing. But it can be explained by a phenomenon that could be described as speculation. Many owners prefer to keep their plots undeveloped, as land values are rising rapidly, making waiting more profitable than building.
For a long time, there has been talk of ways to encourage owners to build or sell their land. Possible solutions include tax incentives to promote construction or the dezoning of building zones after a certain period of time. But so far no decision has been taken in parliament.
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