Switzerland today

Dear Swiss Abroad,

compared to other parts of the world, the Swiss people are relatively trusting of the government and its institutions. However, there is a small group of citizens that wish to tear up their contract with the state.

From not paying their taxes to inundating the bureaucracy with complaints and appeals, their intention is to paralyse the state with their non-compliance. Deluded anarchists or a legitimate threat to the status quo?

Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

In the news: Licence fee poll, Swatch real estate and Netflix watching.

• A people’s initiative, which aims to reduce compulsory radio and television licence fees has won over 61% of Swiss citizens, a survey revealed External linktoday. Only 36% of those questioned rejected it, while 3% had no opinion. The new initiative by the Swiss People’s Party, the Swiss Union of Arts and Crafts (usam) and the young Radicals calls for the licence fee to be reduced from CHF335 to CHF200 per year.
• The watchmaking giant Swatch Group has acquired a building in central London’s New Bond Street External linkfor CHF90 million ($98.5 million). In the first half of this year, the Group had already acquired a prime 1,347 m2 property at 32 to 33 Old Bond Street for around CHF120 million, and a store on the Champs-Elysées in Paris.
• Despite the peak of the Covid pandemic behind us, many of us are still watching Netflix and chilling. The use of video on demand (VoD) on streaming platforms remained virtually unchanged between 2022 and 2021External link. American content is on the up while Swiss films accounted for less than 3% of the supply and only 1% of streams.

© Keystone / Christian Beutler

Down with the state: An orchestrated campaign to paralyse the Swiss bureaucracy?

According to an SRF survey, around 10,000 “state objectors” (“Staatsverweigerer” in German) are active in Switzerland. At the heart of their ideology is a distrust of the state, seen as too powerful an entity that enriches itself at the expense of its citizens.

They are making life difficult for civil servantsExternal link in German-speaking Switzerland by refusing to pay their taxes and flooding the administration with protest letters. This phenomenon has been on the rise since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Authorities believe that they are well connected to each other and know exactly how to make life as difficult as possible for bureaucrats.

Keystone / Stf

Switzerland in 2085: WWF and AI shows what the future could look like with climate change

The Rhine Falls reduced to a trickle, the Matterhorn stripped of its eternal snow or the Aletsch glacier replaced by a lake: WWF has used the aid of artificial intelligenceExternal link to show how climate change could transform local landscapes by 2085 if no climate protection measures were taken.

According to calculations by the Climate Action Tracker organisation, global warming will be around 2.7°C degrees by the end of the century. As an Alpine country, Switzerland could be particularly hard hit.