Swiss not against possible Schüssel visit

Just over half of the Swiss do not see any problem in Austria's chancellor, Wolfgang Schüssel (pictured), visiting Switzerland.

Just over half of the Swiss do not see any problem in Austria’s chancellor, Wolfgang Schüssel (pictured), visiting Switzerland. In a survey carried out by the opinion poll institute, Isopublic, for the French language Sunday newspaper, dimanche.ch, 50.2 per cent of people questioned said they had nothing against Schüssel coming to Switzerland. Only 18 per cent said they were against.

But the poll also revealed a large number of people who were undecided. Almost a third of those surveyed said they did not feel able to answer the question.

There was also a strong linguistic difference in people’s responses. The survey revealed that the German speaking Swiss were less opposed to a Schüssel visit than the French speaking Swiss. While over half of German speakers said yes to a possible Schüssel visit, only a third of French speakers were in favour.

When asked whether they saw any similarities between the Swiss People’s Party’s, Christoph Blocher, and the leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, Jörg Haider, over 45 per cent said they thought the two men shared a number of political ideas. Again there was a noticeable language divide, with more German than French speakers seeing similarities. But Matthias Kappeler of l’Institut Isopublic, said this was probably because Blocher was better known among the German speaking Swiss.

From staff and wire reports