Spring session wrap: parliament spares Swiss Abroad services from budget cuts

Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter defended the government's austerity package in the House of Representatives. Keystone / Peter Klaunzer

The Swiss government's austerity package has been streamlined considerably by parliament. Federal funds for services linked to the Swiss Abroad have been spared.

A big chunk of parliament’s spring session was dedicated to the government’s austerity package 27. The government wanted to save up to CHF3 billion ($3.8 billion) per year to comply with the debt brake in the future. Now parliament has had the chance to debate these austerity measures and soften the blow.

In the winter session, the Senate already trimmed the austerity plans by more than a third. In the spring session, the House of Representatives also blunted the proposed savings measures. In the end, only about 60% of the planned cuts remain.

Funds for Swissinfo and OSA remain

Among those spared are three organisations that offer services specifically for Swiss nationals abroad and receive federal funding for this. These are Swissinfo, the Organisation of the Swiss Abroad (OSA) and the Swiss schools overseas.

Swissinfo, which is aimed in particular at the Swiss Abroad, receives around CHF9 million a year or half its annual budget from the federal coffers.

This financing is regulated by the government’s international mandate to Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, which also includes other media offerings, such as partnerships with TV5Monde or 3sat. The proposed reduction was rejected by both chambers of parliament.

The foreign ministry’s annual contribution to the Organisation of the Swiss Abroad (OSA) will also remain unchanged. This amounts to CHF400,000, which the government wanted to cut. The Senate had approved this cut but there was resistance in the House of Representatives. However, as this was one of the smallest items in the austerity package, the Senate relented and the cuts are thus off the table.

Swiss schools overseas were also partially spared. Here, the savings proposal went back and forth between the two chambers. Finally, parliament decided to limit the cuts to the “training of young Swiss Abroad” to CHF1 million per year from 2028. That is CHF2 million less in cuts than originally planned.

No referendum in sight

Sports associations, regional airports, agriculture, the cantons, the environmental sector, tourism and the idea of increasing taxes on lump-sum withdrawals from pension funds also escaped the cutbacks – at least in part.

These decisions are representative of the development of the entire bill. In the debates, parliamentarians significantly reduced the size of the austerity package. Roughly speaking, parliament managed to prevent around CHF1 billion in cuts or around 40% of the amount proposed by the government.

Everyone is equally dissatisfied

After the cuts, the left-wing Green Party will refrain from holding a referendum. The left-wing Social Democrats will take a week after the spring session to decide whether they want to hold another referendum, but it is unlikely.

This means that the sometimes heated debate about the government’s austerity package has come to a somewhat consolidated end. The savings are still substantial but justifiable even for the fiercest opponents. Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter would have liked to save more. In the end, everyone is equally dissatisfied – a sign of a successful compromise in the Federal Palace.

E-Collecting gets the green light

For Swiss citizens abroad, a parliamentary decision on e-collecting is also groundbreaking. The government and parliament want to make pilots for digital signature collecting for initiatives and referendums possible.

This means that for the first time the Swiss Abroad will also have the opportunity to participate in signature collections. These are to be made possible in optional referendums, popular initiatives – but also to support House of Representatives’ candidates with signatures.

Before the definitive introduction of this instrument, an intensive trial phase is to take place – on a very limited scale. The Senate also insisted that these trials should be “limited locally”.

What does this mean for the Swiss Abroad? In the debate, the term “local” was used as opposed to “nationwide”. For the time being, only individual municipalities or cantons can take part in the trials. An exclusion of the Swiss Abroad was therefore not an issue.

This  amendment, contained in the Federal Act on Political RightsExternal link, is now fixed in principle, but it will go back to the House of Representatives for modifications.

Update to the Swiss Abroad Act

Swiss citizens who voluntarily joined French or Italian resistance groups against fascism during the Second World War are to be rehabilitated. This is what the House of Representatives wants. The bill will now go to the Senate

Another business that affects the diaspora: the Swiss Abroad Act. It has been in force for ten years. Is it worth checking to see whether it still meets the requirements of the times? The Senate thinks so and is now having the administration draw up proposals for an update.

On the other hand, the abolition of childcare payments to pensioners, which was originally on the agenda, was postponed to a later session – this is also a topic that is of interest to many Swiss pensioners residing abroad.

Return of nuclear power

From a domestic political point of view, the decision to return to nuclear power is considered the most striking decision of the session: nuclear power plants may be built again. The government wants to delete the current ban and keep the option of nuclear energy open. This decision was made exactly 15 years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which led to Switzerland’s withdrawal from nuclear energy.

Switzerland is thus following an international trend. New reactors are currently being built in the UK, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine, and new ones are planned in many other European countries. The EU Commission is also focusing on new nuclear reactors.

The possibility of building new nuclear power plants is the content of a counterproposal to the “Blackout Initiative”, which is also approved by the Senate. The matter will next go to the House of Representatives.

Neutrality initiative without counterproposal

The neutrality initiative also required a long back and forth between the two chambers. This wants to enshrine Switzerland’s “perpetual and armed” neutrality in the constitution. The initiative calls for a waiver of sanctions without a decision by the UN Security Council.

Both chambers recommend rejecting the initiative. However, the Senate wanted to rewrite neutrality in the constitution more precisely as a counterproposal to the initiative. At the end of the session, both councils decided that the right-wing Swiss People’s Party initiative should be put to the people without a counterproposal. After the discussion in parliament, the neutrality initiative is thus ready for a referendum.

This also applies to the popular initiative “For safe food”.External link This also had no chance in the Senate. It calls for food production to be increasingly geared towards plant-based food.

The House of Representatives recommends that a popular initiative submitted by animal rights activists for an import ban on foie gras products be rejected. However, a counterproposal will address some of the concerns of the initiative in the form of an obligation to declare force-feeding, which is illegal in Switzerland, on labels.

Crans Montana, murder and pesticides

Other topics that caused a stir:

– An urgent federal law to support the victims of Crans-Montana has been passed. A solidarity amount of CHF50,000 each is to be paid to relatives of victims and all persons treated in hospital.

– Murder should no longer be statute-barred in Switzerland. The crime can be prosecuted at any time due to developments in forensic technologies.

– Plant protection products that have been approved in a neighbouring EU country, the Netherlands or Belgium, can be approved more quickly in Switzerland in the future.

Additional reporting by SRF and Keystone-SDA

Edited by Samuel Jaberg. Translated from French by AI/ac

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