New parliamentarians – including a Swiss Abroad – sworn in

Rudi Berli and Therese Schläpfer being sworn in. Keystone-SDA

The Swiss House of Representatives has two new members. Therese Schläpfer and Rudi Berli were sworn in at the beginning of the winter session on Monday.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Schläpfer, a member of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party for Zurich, is a returnee to the Federal Palace. The 66-year-old was already a member of the House of Representatives from 2019 to 2023 but ended up as the first substitute in the autumn 2023 elections. She is now replacing Alfred Heer, who died during the autumn session.

Rudi Berli, from the left-wing Green Party, replaces Nicolas Walder, who was elected to the cantonal government of Geneva on October 19. The 62-year-old vegetable farmer and Uniterre trade unionist wants to campaign for sustainable agriculture that produces enough to live on. He also wants to bring in the perspective of a border region.

Berli lives in France but commutes to Switzerland to work on a vegetable farm. After Tim Guldimann, who served in the House of Representatives from Berlin for two years almost ten years ago, another Swiss Abroad is now a member of parliament.

Also on Monday Pierre-André Page was elected president of the House of Representatives and Stefan Engler president of the Senate. Both will serve for one year.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

How we work 

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]