President Micheline Calmy-Rey has held talks in Germany on bilateral tax issues as well as air and rail transport with Switzerland’s northern neighbour.
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Calmy-Rey on a visit to Berlin met the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the German foreign and economics ministers on Monday.
Calmy-Rey, who is also foreign minister, said Switzerland did not accept illegal money and proposed imposing a withholding tax on funds deposited in Swiss bank accounts.
“Both sides now want to engage in speedy, thorough and solution-oriented negotiations,” she said.
Negotiations, which began last week, are aimed at resolving a long-standing row over untaxed money in Swiss banks and access for Swiss insurance companies to the German market.
For her part, Merkel pledged to support close cooperation between Switzerland and the European Union.
She also praised Swiss support in the euro currency crisis.
Both leaders stressed that solutions should be found in talks between experts on flight restrictions for planes using German airspace when approaching Switzerland’s main airport of Zurich.
Train vs plane: would you take a direct train between London and Geneva?
Eurostar is planning to run direct trains from Britain to Germany and Switzerland from the early 2030s. Would you favour the train over the plane? If not, why not?
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The details could be finalised by the end of the month according to Michael Ambühl, a top Swiss negotiator for international financial matters. “There are no concrete figures yet but we have agreed with Germany on principles and formulas which have to be fleshed out in negotiations,” Ambühl said in Thursday’s Tages-Anzeiger newspaper. Ambühl said…
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The Swiss have lost successive appeals over a unilateral German decree banning low-altitude night time flights over its airspace, imposed in 2003. “The government remains convinced that the German decree puts excessive restrictions on the capacity of Zurich airport and discriminates against the airline Swiss,” the transport ministry said in a news release on Wednesday.…
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Burri became a full member of Magnum in 1959, when he started work on his book, The Germans, published in Switzerland in 1962. The book was similar to Robert Frank’s The Americans. And like The Americans, Burri’s photo essay on life in Germany was considered ahead of its time.
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