The week in Switzerland

This week saw the government launch its campaign in favour of the ratification of a series of bilateral accords with the European Union. The treaties will be put to a referendum to be held on May 21.

This week saw the government launch its campaign in favour of the ratification of a series of bilateral accords with the European Union. The treaties will be put to a referendum to be held on May 21.

The formal announcement came on Wednesday, when the government said it had checked 66,000 signatures collected by opponents of the accords. There was little difficulty gathering the 50,000 necessary to force the vote, and a date for the referendum had been set long before the signatures were even handed in.

But the government used the formal validation announcement to launch its own campaign for ratification of the accords. The president, Adolf Ogi, said it was a vote that had to be won. Analysts say the government is determined to avoid making the same mistake as in 1992, when it underestimated the size of opposition to plans to join the European Economic Area, and lost the vote. The government has spent the years since then negotiating the bilateral treaties with the EU.

The government also decided this week to release 600 million francs to help in the clean-up operation after the hurricane which swept through the country in December. Three quarters of the money will go towards repairing damage to forests, which lost 15 million trees. The rest is earmarked for damaged transport links, such as railway lines and cable cars.

Two government-appointed commissions also released their findings this week. One recommended a major shake-up of the secret service, saying it should be put under civilian control and made more professional. The recommendations came in the wake of a scandal last year, in which an intelligence service book-keeper allegedly embezzled eight million francs.

The other commission, which had been looking into asylum procedures, recommended that the time taken to process asylum requests should be reduced to six months. It said a speedy process would reduce uncertainty for asylum-seekers and make it easier to repatriate people whose requests had been turned down.

Finally, the Olympic flame is flickering in Switzerland again. Six months after the town of Sion failed in its third attempt to host the Winter Olympics, canton Graubünden has taken the first step towards applying. A feasibility study commissioned by the canton and local authorities came out in favour of plans to bid for the games in 2010. It said very little additional construction would be necessary, and that, as the largest tourism region in Switzerland, the canton could easily cope with the influx of visitors for the event.

By Malcolm Shearmur