Switzerland Today

Greetings from Zurich!

Many people will declare New Year’s resolutions, vowing to reform their lives for the start of 2023. Parliament has resolved its New Year’s changes today by voting in two new ministers to serve in government from January 1.

But first, the other news of the day.

© Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

Google Words, football hangovers and naturalised citizens.

• War and Sport dominated Swiss Google searches in 2022. The search terms of the year were “Ukraine”, followed by “WM 2022” for the football World Cup, currently underway in Qatar, and the online game “Wordle”.
• The Swiss football team was knocked out of the World Cup last night after being routed 6-1 by Portugal. The magnitude of defeat has sparked an inevitable media backlash aimed at the coach and questions about whether the team should be dismantled and rebuilt.
• The House of Representatives wants to make life easier for third generation people living in Switzerland to achieve facilitated naturalisation. That’s why the chamber has voted to remove red-tape and hurdles for people. But the Senate has so far disagreed with this diagnosis, resulting in a political stalemate.

© Keystone/Peter Schneider

New Year, new ministers

The day was dominated by the parliamentary election of Albert Rösti (Swiss People’s Party) and Elisabeth Baume-Schneider (Social Democrats) to replace departing government ministers Ueli Maurer and Simonetta Sommaruga from January 1.

Rösti breezed through in the first round but it took three ballots for Baume-Schneider to pip Eva Herzog past the post to become the first politician from canton Jura to join the Federal Council.

The vote did not upset the ‘Magic Formula’ of political party representation in government or change the proportion of men to women, but it did rearrange the geographical composition of the cabinet.

Only three members of the new government will be Swiss-German speakers, giving the ‘Latin’ contingent a rare majority, the media notes.

Apparently, the last time Swiss-German was a minority language in cabinet was 1917-1919.

Now parliament faces the task of appointing each federal councillor to a specific ministry during a likely reshuffle of posts.

The most interesting decision will be the selection of Finance Minister, a post that has traditionally gone to a member of the rightwing People’s Party.

The People’s Party believes that left-leaning politicians are unfit for the job of managing the nation’s finances as they are too profligate. It remains to be seen whether parliament agrees or not.

Political commentators are also picking over the bones of how the newly composed Federal Council will impact the General Election that will take place in October next year.