The week in Switzerland
Dear Swiss Abroad,
It has been a turbulent week for Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis. As OSCE chairperson, he travelled to Ukraine and Russia to position the organisation for the implementation of potential future peace agreements. At the same time, Cassis has become the first Swiss government minister to be named in a case before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. And back home, he is facing criticism over a short domestic trip taken on the government jet.
Best wishes from Bern
Cassis is under pressure on several fronts. While Switzerland’s foreign minister is seeking dialogue in Moscow as OSCE chairperson, he is also facing legal accusations abroad and criticism at home over his travel choices.
For the first time in history, a Swiss government minister has been named in a case submitted to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Swiss public broadcaster SRF reported. A collective of 25 lawyers has filed a complaint accusing Cassis of aiding and abetting war crimes in connection with the Gaza war, citing Switzerland’s continued exports of military goods to Israel. Legal experts consider the likelihood of a formal indictment to be low, but the case nonetheless marks a sensitive moment for Swiss diplomacy.
Domestically, Cassis has also drawn criticism over his use of the government jet. According to Blick, he flew from Bern to Geneva and on to Lugano to attend a Radical-Liberal Party meeting, at a reported cost of CHF11,000 ($14,135). With 155 flight hours in 2024, Cassis logged more air time than any other government minister. Critics question his example-setting role on climate change and public spending, noting that such distances could easily be covered by train.
At the same time, Cassis travelled to Kyiv and Moscow this week as OSCE chairperson, seeking to strengthen the organisation’s role in potential ceasefire monitoring in Ukraine. It was one of the rare visits by a Western minister to Russia since 2022, the Tages Anzeiger noted. While experts broadly support continued dialogue, they warn of the risk of Russian propaganda. Moscow has already used the visit to signal diplomatic recognition, while Cassis is attempting to prevent the OSCE from sliding into political insignificance.
The bar fire in Crans-Montana on New Year’s Eve shook Switzerland. A month on, it is becoming clear that for many of the injured, surviving the inferno was only the beginning of a far more complex struggle, one that exposes the limits of modern medicine.
The disaster has now claimed 41 lives. An 18-year-old Swiss survivor died in Zurich not from his burns, but from a hospital infection. According to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), infections account for around 60% of deaths in burn centres. The Beobachter reports that some 5,900 people die each year in Swiss hospitals from such infections, a known risk that has been debated politically for years, but remains difficult to contain.
Burn victims are particularly vulnerable because the skin, the body’s first barrier against infections, is destroyed. Without this first line of defence, patients can remain susceptible to infections for years. To counter this, medicine is increasingly turning to innovative solutions, from lab-grown skin developed in Lausanne to Icelandic fish skin and gels made from lugworm haemoglobin, as reported by Nau.ch.
Yet the consequences are not just physical. Survivors such as 18-year-old Rose told 20 Minuten about recurring nightmares and the feeling of “no longer being able to live normally”. “You hear the screams again, you see the burned people again,” she said. “These are images that stay with you.”
In times of global crisis, Switzerland often appears divided. But is the country’s social glue really coming unstuck? A new study by the Sotomo research institute offers a more nuanced picture of cohesion in the Alpine nation – with some findings that are particularly alarming from afar.
Despite political polarisation, direct democracy remains the strongest source of social cohesion, with 76% of respondents citing it as the key unifying factor, Tamedia newspapers report. According to the survey, it outweighs traditional concepts such as consensus politics or the militia system.
Expats and immigrants view cohesion in Switzerland more positively than the resident population. Those with experience of other political systems tend to rate Switzerland’s stability more highly. For the Swiss Abroad, this offers a familiar insight: The strengths of a system often become clearer only through comparison.
Within Switzerland itself, perceptions vary sharply. While people in German-speaking regions and urban centres tend to see cohesion in a positive light, respondents in French-speaking Switzerland and rural areas report more pronounced fault lines. According to the study, cohesion is perceived as weakest between the political left and right, between rich and poor and between residents and immigrants.
A decades-old agreement is fuelling growing resentment along the German-Swiss border. While farmers in Baden say they are struggling to survive, Swiss farmers are cultivating large tracts of land in Germany – with EU subsidies.
Under a customs agreement dating back to 1958, Swiss farmers are allowed to tax-free cultivation in a 10-kilometre zone inside Germany and can sell their harvest in Switzerland without quantity limits. They benefit from lower production costs across the border while also receiving EU direct payments. In 2024, these subsidies amounted to nearly €767,000 (CHF703,124) for Swiss farms, the Badische Zeitung reported.
The strong purchasing power of Swiss farms allows them to pay two to three times local prices for farmland, a German farmers’ representative told the newspaper. This has led not only to land leases but also to entire farms being bought up. In some German municipalities, Swiss owners now control around half of the agricultural land, accelerating structural change.
Christian Müller, president of the Schaffhausen Farmers’ Association, rejects the criticism as one-sided. He told Blick that land was sold or leased voluntarily and that border regions benefit significantly from Swiss commuters and shopping tourism. The EU subsidies, he argues, are legitimate compensation for maintaining German farmland. Swiss farmers, he adds, were initially encouraged by German authorities to take part in the scheme.
The week ahead
The big highlights from a Swiss perspective are the Winter Olympics in Italy that begin this weekend: the men’s downhill in Bormio on Saturday, followed by the women’s downhill in Cortina on Sunday. Four years ago, Swiss skiers claimed two medals in the men’s race and seven in the women’s event.
On Thursday, the Swiss media will turn its attention to Muttenz, in Basel Country, where the local criminal court is due to open proceedings in a high-profile case involving the seizure of 500 kilograms of cocaine that ended up at a Nespresso factory.
And on Friday, the Lötschental will once again celebrate its traditional “Tschäggättä” carnival. The custom returns less than a year after the mountain village of Blatten, at the upper end of the valley, was almost completely destroyed by a glacier collapse and landslide last May.
Translated using AI/amva
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