How Karin Keller-Sutter became too big to fail

The role of Swiss president rotates annually among the seven members of government: in 2025, it’s the turn of Karin Keller-Sutter from the centre-right Radical-Liberal Party. Keystone / Michael Buholzer

The Swiss finance minister, who will hold the country’s rotating presidency in 2025, has a reputation as a power-hungry hardliner. But those who have worked closely with Karin Keller-Sutter attribute her rise to a less visible emotional intelligence.

Twenty-three years ago, this writer got a first impression of Karin Keller-Sutter when, at 38, she was the head of canton St Gallen’s security and justice department.

At the time, in July 2002, a new phenomenon was sparking media focus and had become a political minefield: dealers of African origin were selling pellets of cocaine.

Asylum centres were becoming drug distribution centres, the police appeared to be overwhelmed, and accusations of racism were mounting.

Keller-Sutter had beefed up patrols in affected areas of her canton; this had brought not only attention, but also a reputation as a hardliner. What did she have to say about it?

Late-evening phone call

After being contacted by email, Keller-Sutter replied immediately, asking for a phone call that evening. “You can reach me until 10pm,” she wrote, giving a private number. This was unusual; cantonal governments have secretariats, press offices, office hours.

But the real surprise came later: on the phone, Keller-Sutter spoke more about people than politics, about police officers, migrants and addicts. She talked about what she had heard from these people; about victims, injustice, hardship and stress. Was this how a hardliner talks?

When it came to authorising quotes to be used in the media report, the tone was however different. “They are deliberately abusing our asylum system and exploiting our humanitarian tradition,” she confirmed. Yes, that sounded more like a hardliner.

People who know Keller-Sutter describe a politician who asks questions and does not pretend to have all the answers. “Hardliner” is a label which has always bothered her.

And twenty-three years later, when Keller-Sutter was elected by the parliament in Bern to assume the role as Swiss president for 2025, her reputation had picked up another label: she was now seen as a power-seeker.

Swiss stigma

Just a few days before her December 2024 election, a major portrait of the Radical-Liberal (centre-right) politician appeared in the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper, describing her – not for the first time – as “the most powerful politician in Switzerland”.

But in Switzerland, where authority is painstakingly divided and only granted for a limited period of time, power is a stigma. On the day of her election, Keller-Sutter immediately played down both the presidency role and her influence. “Almost everything is relative,” was the first sentence of her address to parliament.

According to the 2024 election barometer surveyExternal link, the Swiss population reckons Albert Rösti of the Swiss People’s Party is the most influential minister in the seven-member government; he is also the most popular. While the public considers Keller-Sutter to be almost as influential, she is significantly less popular.

Flying the nest

In the St Gallen town of Wil, Keller-Sutter’s mother, Rösly Sutter, serves guests as the proprietor of the Ilge restaurant. Keller-Sutter’s father takes care of cooking and managing supplies. Growing up in the late 1970s, Karin spent a lot of time in this restaurant in eastern Switzerland.

Keller-Sutter at 15. private

Rösly Sutter speaks fluent French with customers from southwestern Switzerland who come to Wil to collect vehicles from the Hürlimann tractor factory. Still today, this part of the country is seen as Switzerland’s industrial heartland, a region built upon the legacy of the traditional textile industry.

As the youngest child in the family, Keller-Sutter had to learn to stand up for herself against three much older brothers. She also learned politics at the restaurant, where it’s necessary to get along with everyone, and to have discussions that don’t immediately turn into arguments.

Liberal enthusiast

Like her mother, who learnt French during a stay on the other side of Switzerland’s language border, Keller-Sutter went to Neuchâtel for a year as a secondary school student. Then, after graduating from high school, she qualified as an interpreter. She spent a year in London and a semester in Montreal, where she studied political science.

After coming back home, she took her distance from the rural Catholic milieu of eastern Switzerland and joined the economically liberal Radical Party in 1987, aged 23. As a young, freedom-focussed woman, she contrasted with the conservative environment of her origins and became a conspicuous figure.

Gottlieb F. Höpli, a former editor-in-chief of the St. Galler Tagblatt, wrote in 2018External link of “a young woman who impressed me with crystal-clear arguments which were always straight to the point”. Already in the 1990s, Keller-Sutter had a “focussed, fact-based approach, which she could communicate precisely”, he wrote.

She was voted onto the local council in Wil, became a board member of the cantonal trade association, then a member of the cantonal parliament, party president and finally a minister in the cantonal government, taking over the security and justice portfolio.

“Her arguments, which are never based on personal attacks, sometimes come across as stiff – but that doesn’t seem to bother voters,” Höpli wrote.

Two of the most powerful figures in Swiss politics: former government minister Christoph Blocher, and current government minister Keller-Sutter. Keystone

It all comes down to money

In 2011, Keller-Sutter entered federal politics as a member of the Swiss Senate. She quickly got up to speed on economic and social policy – what the state takes in, what it gives out. Poring over the details of the state coffers, she learned the mechanics of government in Bern.

When it came to reaching across the divide to political opponents, she had no qualms – on the contrary, she did deals. In Senate committees, she made concessions and won them from others.

She came across as relaxed and unpretentious in interpersonal dealings. She was described as ideologically unbending but strategically flexible. She also knew how to build and maintain networks.

And finally, after years polishing her political skills, she was elected to Switzerland’s seven-member government in 2018, where she settled – against her will – for the vacant role of Justice Minister.

However, in 2023, at the first chance, she jumped to the finance ministry. Thirty years in political office had taught her that all areas of politics ultimately come down to money. “She can use finance to help shape the agenda of the entire government, and she does this precisely,” says Lukas Golder, co-director of the gfs.bern research institute.

In 2023, after the last-ditch sale of Credit Suisse, Keller-Sutter was grilled by parliamentarians about the state’s role in the operation. Keystone / Alessandro Della Valle

Criticism from the left

In 2020, Keller-Sutter launched a campaign against the Responsible Business Initiative – a proposal to make Swiss firms accountable for their actions abroad – and succeeded in having it narrowly defeated at the ballot box. Opponents accused her of getting too involved, given her position as a member of the government. A headline in the left-wing Wochenzeitung newspaper dubbed her the “Queen of Capital”.

In 2023, she orchestrated the emergency sale of Credit Suisse to UBS, just hours before its collapse would have dragged the global financial system into the unknown. Her opponents accused her of financially over-committing the state. The Wochenzeitung, again, called the state guarantee underpinning the deal “a mistake”.

Thomas Jordan, the former head of the Swiss National Bank, worked closely with Keller-Sutter. “She always aims to get a grasp of all the complex details needed to understand the big picture,” he says. “That’s how she manages to make serious decisions.”

In 2023, the Financial Times ranked Keller-Sutter among the 25 most influential women in the worldExternal link, saying she combines “knowledge, courage and determination”.

Cutting subsidies

In 2024, she tabled an austerity programme to cut CHF5 billion in Swiss state spending. Opponents accused her of pursuing a hidden, conservative agenda. “In making savings, Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter believes she has found a lever to reverse the social progress made in recent years,” the Wochenzeitung wrote.

In interviews, she emphasises that her concern is always to ensure federal authorities have the capacity to take action. “It is a mistake to believe that liberalism seeks to weaken the state,” she told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

The austerity plan is ambitious. It’s almost as if Keller-Sutter has taken upon herself the hardest task in Swiss politics: cutting subsidies. Debates about the cuts will characterise her presidential year. They might be loud – but then again, she’s a lifelong punk rock fan. And she’s ready for a fight; her hobby is boxing.

Edited by Samuel Jaberg; adapted from German by Catherine Hickley/dos