Former Swiss minister criticised for visit to Chinese embassy

Busy retirement: Ueli Maurer at a parade in Zurich on April 17, five days after visiting the Chinese embassy in Bern © Keystone / Michael Buholzer

Retired government minister Ueli Maurer visited the Chinese ambassador in Bern on April 12 – the day the House of Representatives approved strengthened relations with Taiwan’s parliament. Eyebrows and questions have been raised.

The Federal Chancellery says Maurer, who was a member of the seven-person Federal Council from 2009 to the end of 2022 for the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, didn’t have a government mandate.

Maurer and Ambassador Wang Shihting exchanged views at length on the “innovative strategic partnership” and “economic, financial and industrial cooperation” between the two countries, the Chinese embassy wrote on its websiteExternal link on Tuesday. The newspaper Blick first reported on the visitExternal link on Thursday under the headline “What’s Ueli Maurer doing with the Chinese?”

According to the Chinese embassy, Maurer expressed his willingness to continue contributing to the deepening of “friendly relations”. The embassy correctly referred to Maurer as “former federal councillor” in the title of its message, but as “federal councillor” in the text itself.

No government mandate

Government spokesman André Simonazzi told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA that the visit was not made on behalf of the government or Switzerland, as there was no government mandate.

The foreign ministry was also not informed. “It was a private visit by former Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer,” wrote the Federal Chancellery, which is responsible for such matters.

It also referred to the code of conduct for government ministers. One of its provisions regulates the gainful employment of former ministers. After leaving office, they are to refrain from activities in which conflicts of interest could arise due to their former office. There are no further regulations regarding meetings of former federal councillors.

The Federal Chancellery did not comment further on Maurer’s visit.

Criticism in parliament

Franz Grüter, president of the House of Representative’s Foreign Affairs Committee and like Maurer a member of the Swiss People’s Party, said personal relations were important in Asia and especially in China. He therefore assumed that Maurer, as a private person, was maintaining personal contacts at the embassy. “There’s no reason why the former federal councillor should not be allowed to do so,” he said.

Fabian Molina from the left-wing Social Democratic Party, and also a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, disagreed. “That’s unacceptable,” he said. “The responsible bodies have to clarify what Maurer wanted in the Chinese embassy. If he was using his former office to promote private business, that would be questionable.” In such a case, the code of conduct would have to be clarified, Molina said.

Philipp Matthias Bregy, head of the parliamentary group for The Centre party, described the visit as “insensitive”. Maurer has an official mandate as a member of the Ethics Committee of the Olympic Association, Bregy said. “In this function he could have visited the embassy, but he would have to show that this was the case.”

Bregy added that the discussion should have revolved around sporting and not economic topics. “And Maurer should certainly not have been sitting under the Swiss flag, as in the photo published by the embassy, but at most under the Olympic flag.”

Maurer has a knack for raising eyebrows. When he held the rotating Swiss presidency in 2019, he was criticised for going on an “autocrat world tour”, meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and US President Donald Trump. As finance minister from 2016 to 2022, he has been accused of falling asleep at the wheel as Credit Suisse lurched from one crisis to another. Switzerland’s second-largest bank eventually imploded in March.