We continue our tour of European countries at the start of the year, today Switzerland, the Swiss Confederation, with Richard Werly, correspondent for the Swiss media Blick and the Republick newsletter.
franceinfo: Richard Werly, 2024 for Switzerland, how does it start?
Richard Werly: It starts with uncertainty, which is obviously European, but which affects Switzerland. It is the uncertainty linked to neutrality, and in particular to the famous question which worried us a lot, of the re-export of arms to Ukraine. You know that today, it is not possible for Switzerland to re-export or authorize customers of Swiss arms to re-export them to Ukraine, which is a country at war, in the name of neutrality. .
It will weigh on the debates. It also weighs on the debates. The new Parliament, which was elected on October 22, immediately took up the subject. We are in the process of finding arrangements, but for the moment, not for Ukraine, that is to say not for a country at war.
But be careful, regarding neutrality, there will soon be a vote?
Yes, it will undoubtedly take place in 2025. After the start of the war in Ukraine, therefore February 2022, a few months later, an initiative was tabled by the hard right, the UDC, the Democratic Union of the Center, in order to to preserve Swiss neutrality, and to enshrine it in the Constitution. You may not know it, but Swiss neutrality is not enshrined in the Constitution, it is said that the government and Parliament ensure neutrality, but it is not enshrined as a principle.
This would undoubtedly have the consequence, then, of closing the debate on all these re-exports of arms, and of further isolating Switzerland diplomatically. We will know in May, and there will probably be a vote in 2025.
You talk about hard right like the UDC, it’s true that the Swiss nationalists are moving…
A lot, it’s moving and it’s occupying land, I would say unchanged for about 20 years now. We had a federal election on October 22. Were renewed, both, the Lower House, that is to say the National Council and the Upper House, the Council of States, and the UDC again won 28% of the votes, arrived very largely in head.
It is therefore this formation which today is represented by two ministers within our collegial government of seven ministers. We can say that the driving force of the Swiss political debate remains the SVP, which obliges the other parties, when they want to reach a decision, to coalesce against this national populist right-wing force.
The current news is farmers and the question of agriculture in Europe, we are going to address the question of Swiss farmers, who are a little different, it must be said?
Yes, Farmers are undoubtedly the social category which, in Switzerland, has benefited the most from not being in the European Union. So that doesn’t mean that Swiss products, which you know, are not subject to the tensions of the world market.
Firstly because Switzerland is a net importer of agricultural products. Then because Swiss agricultural products, whether wine or cheese, are products that go towards export, and therefore you depend on world markets. But I would say that there are two things which have relatively preserved Swiss agriculture.
Firstly, in Switzerland we do not have, in the same proportions, large industrial agriculture, for simple reasons of geographical configuration. We are not the Netherlands, we are not the great French cereal plains.
In other words, this type of agriculture, which is today terribly impacted by new legislation on pesticides, does not exist in Switzerland where it exists much less. And second thing, our agriculture, which is mountain agriculture, has always benefited from a fairly close consumption chain, from producer to consumer.
And from this point of view, it must be said that the large Swiss distribution cooperatives, the names are known, Migros and COP, have always played the game. So I would say that Swiss agriculture and Swiss farmers also know structural problems, but Swiss agriculture was still protected.
And finally, we have to say it, the difference is that Switzerland has money in the coffers. We have no financial problems. The state is not over-indebted, and therefore, when we have to write checks to farmers, we still have the capacity to write them.