Switzerland Today

Dear Swiss Abroad,

The excitement is over. Swiss lawmakers have re-elected six members of the cross-party cabinet for another four-year term and chosen 59-year-old Beat Jans, the favourite, to replace outgoing interior minister, Alain Berset. Stability, continuity and experience were the words of the day in Bern. But as my colleague Balz Rigendinger writes, this was more than just a Swiss Federal Council election - the result will affect four crucial policy areas: Swiss-EU relations, e-voting, the Swiss political system and cooperation within government.

Read on for more news and stories from Switzerland today.

© Keystone / Gaetan Bally

In the news: flooding and landslides, end of wolf culls and Covid spike.

• Nearly two out of three people are planning to reduce their spending on Christmas presents this year, according to auditing firm EY, following its traditional end-of-year survey of some 600 consumers. The average amount Swiss shoppers intend to spend is CHF282, a good fifth less than a year earlier.
• After canton Graubünden, on Wednesday Valais halted the shooting of the wolf packs of Hauts-Forts, Nanz and Le Fou-Isérables. The decision follows an appeal by nature conservation organisations to a federal court.
• The Swiss State Secretariat for Migration is keen to set up an advisory body for refugees in Switzerland and at a multilateral level. The commitment is one of several unveiled by the Alpine nation at the start of the second World Refugee Forum in Geneva.
• Covid-19 and other respiratory viruses are circulating again in Switzerland and putting hospitals under pressure. 
• Growth forecasts for Switzerland for the next two years have been revised downwards slightly by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute. 
• Swiss luxury watchmaker Breitling AG is making its first major acquisition, buying the historic company Universal Genève in an attempt to revive a brand that has faded since its heyday.
• Heavy rain and melting snow have caused flood and landslide warnings in Switzerland. Canton Valais and the Jura and Lake Biel regions are particularly badly affected.

Keystone / Martin Divisek

COP28 climate deal was ‘partial success’, says Swiss environmental group.

The COP28 climate summit in Dubai has adopted a final deal that for the first time calls on nations to transition away from fossil fuels. The government says this is a “positive” development while the environmental organisation WWF Switzerland called it a “partial success”.

The pact agreed on Wednesday also calls for a tripling of renewable energy capacity globally by 2030, speeding up efforts to reduce coal, and accelerating technologies such as carbon capture and storage that can clean up hard-to-decarbonize industries. The headline announcement boils down to the first time the world has expressed a unified desire to eventually end the oil age, and it sends a resounding signal to international markets.

For Switzerland, this result is positive, said the Federal Office for the Environment. “As a small country, it depends on the joint efforts of all states, particularly those that emit significant quantities of greenhouse gases, aimed at phasing out fossil fuels. In addition, the wording of the recommendation admits the use of CO2 capture and storage technologies. Switzerland will commit to ensuring that these technologies are only implemented for emissions that are difficult to avoid,” it saidExternal link.

The WWF said the transition announcement was a “partial success”. The outcome of these negotiations, the most important since the Paris climate summit in 2015, is a signal for Switzerland too, it added.

“Unfortunately, a binding pathway for a global phase-out of fossil fuels was not included in the final declaration. But the international community is clearly committed to phasing out coal, oil and gas by 2050,” said WWF Switzerland climate expert Patrick Hofstetter.

The medium-term climate target for 2035 was also set in Dubai. By then, global CO2 emissions must be reduced by 60%, and each country must make its own contribution. By 2025 at the latest, countries will have to submit their new climate protection plans to the UN, detailing how they intend to meet the target.

With its current trajectory, Switzerland is not meeting any of the climate targets, says WWF. On December 20 parliamentarians in the House of Representatives will look at this when they discuss the Swiss CO2 Act.

© Keystone / Peter Schneider

Federal Council election: Beat Jans replaces Alain Berset, cabinet re-elected.

Parliament voted Beat Jans from Basel (in photo above) to the seven-member Federal Council (executive body). He will replace the outgoing interior minister, Alain Berset, who decided to step down at the end of the year.

Following three rounds of voting, Jans beat his fellow left-wing Social Democratic Party rivals Daniel Jositsch and Jon Pult on Wednesday. Jans won 134 votes out of 245 in the third round. Jositsch received 68 votes and Pult from Grisons 43.

Jans, 59, has been a fixture in local and national politics for over two decades. He has been the president of the Basel City cantonal government for around three years. He is a former federal parliamentarian and vice president of the Social Democratic Party.

The six other members of the cross-party cabinet – Economic Minister Guy Parmelin (Swiss People’s Party), Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis (Radical Liberal Party), Defence Minister Viola Amherd (Centre Party), Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter (Radical Liberal Party), Environment Minister Albert Rösti (People’s Party) and Justice Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider (Social Democratic Party) – were re-elected for another four-year term. The balance of the Swiss government will not change following the rightward shift in the October general election, as Jans comes from the same Social Democrat party as Berset.

The Greens contended that the party had a claim to a seat in the cabinet despite its slump in the October election. They argued that the Radicals were overrepresented with two ministers.

Green parliamentarian Gerhard Andrey challenged Ignazio Cassis but came nowhere near unseating him. The defeat followed an unsuccessful bid to eject Cassis after a strong election performance by the Greens in 2019.

In other decisions, Viola Amherd will replace Berset in the honorary presidential role next year. Parliament also elected Viktor Rossi, a Liberal Green, to take over from Walter Thurnherr as chancellor.