Switzerland

The Federal Office of Public Health was too cautious when it published partially redacted federal contracts with Covid-19 vaccine suppliers in August 2022. This is the conclusion reached by Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, Adrian Lobsiger.

In a statement published on Monday, Lobsiger's office writes that the exceptional reasons put forward by the public health office and the vaccine companies were not presented "with the depth of reasoning required by case law". ...

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) will not intervene in a complaint brought by trade unions in Geneva over a ban on demonstrations introduced in Switzerland during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Grand Chamber of the Court issued its decision on Monday.

It ruled that a complaint brought by the umbrella organisation of Geneva trade unions, the CGAS, was inadmissible. The Grand Chamber ruled that the CGAS had not exhausted all legal remedies in Switzerland before it turned to the ECtHR.

In March 2022, the first instance of the ECtHR had ruled that the ban on demonstrations during the pandemic constituted a violation of the freedom of assembly and association under the European Convention on Human Rights. ...

This week, the Swiss Armed Forces are taking part in the NATO Cyber Coalition exercise to defend against cyber attacks. More than 1,000 participants from over 30 countries are participating in this exercise.

The aim is to jointly solve complex problems, close weak points and create a common picture of the situation, the Armed Forces announced at the start of the exercise on Monday.

The Cyber Coalition event has been carried out regularly since 2008. This year's edition of the exercise will last until Friday. According to the information provided, a virtual training environment was created especially for Cyber Coalition so that the real systems are not damaged. ...

Badly programmed speed cameras incorrectly flashed 9,604 vehicles this autumn in the Swiss capital city, Bern.

The new radar system made the errors between September 12 and October 19. The problem arose due to an error in the programming of the software.

Four measuring systems in the city of Bern were affected, as the Bern cantonal police announced on Monday. The people affected will be informed by letter in the coming days and the approximately 6,000 fines that have already been paid will be refunded. ...

Voters in the Swiss city of Lucerne voters have overwhelmingly rejected a basic income experiment. Some 69% of voters turned down the people’s initiative at the weekend.

In total, 13,457 people rejected the test, while 6,003 voters were in favour. The voter turnout was 37%.

The initiative of a non-party committee wanted to test the model of an unconditional basic income locally for its usability in an urban, scientifically supported pilot project.

A group of people would have received a basic monthly income for at least 36 months, regardless of their assets, income and professional status. There was no provision for anything in return. ...

Swiss telecoms provider Sunrise is putting the brakes on costs and plans to cut 200 posts in the first quarter of 2024.

The company announced on Monday that this could result in up to around 180 layoffs.

This corresponds to a reduction of almost 7% of the current approximately 2,700 full-time positions.

The focus of the reduction will be on management positions and functions without direct customer contact. According to the information, the background is the merger with UPC and a planned lean corporate structure. ...

Swiss private bank Julius Bär has disclosed the credit position of Austrian property entrepreneur René Benko and his struggling Signa holding company, warning that further write-downs cannot be ruled out.

The largest single position within the private debt loan book amounts to CHF606 million ($686 million), Julius Bär announced on Monday, without naming Benko. The bank also confirmed that the provisions of CHF70 million, which have been recognised since the beginning of November, are “largely” attributable to this position.

According to the bank, the total private debt loan book amounts to CHF1.5 billion. The next largest positions after Benko are CHF216 million and CHF140 million. These loans did not go to property entrepreneurs. The remaining portfolio consists of 19 significantly smaller positions. ...

Swiss Justice Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider has rejected the idea of outsourcing asylum application procedures to another country.

Speaking to the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday, Baume-Schneider said she expects around 28,000 asylum applications in 2024 - the same number as this year.

“We have ethics, we have a constitutional state,” she said. “We cannot pursue symbolic politics that are not compatible with our legal foundations.” That is why she is currently ruling out outsourcing the asylum procedures abroad. ...

Switzerland wants to host the first Winter Olympics spread across an entire country. It also wants to overcome historic opposition by proposing that the games be the cheapest on record.

Winter Games are usually held by a certain region or city, and they can be pricey. The 2018 edition held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, cost about $13 billion. Even back in 2002, Salt Lake City still spent $2.2 billion on the Games. ...

Switzerland has confirmed that a second Swiss citizen was killed in the terrorist attacks by the radical Islamic Hamas group in Israel on October 7.

The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) says that both victims were Swiss-Israeli dual citizens.

The FDFA received official confirmation of the second fatality on Thursday, it said on Friday at the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency. For data and privacy reasons, no further information could be provided, the foreign ministry said. The “NZZ” newspaper first reported about the second confirmed Swiss fatality. ...

Fresh snow and storms have resulted in an elevated avalanche risk in some areas of the Swiss Alps on Saturday.

From Friday to Saturday afternoon, 30 to 50 centimetres of fresh snow fell at higher altitudes from the Bernese Oberland to the Uri and Glarus Alps in central Switzerland.

But 20 to 40 centimetres of snow also fell over the northern Alpine ridge from the Dent des Morcles to Liechtenstein, northern Graubünden and the Lower Engadine, according to the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF. ...

The EU ambassador to Switzerland, Petros Mavromichalis, sees further room for negotiation following the conclusion of exploratory talks between Switzerland and the EU.

The present declaration is not a binding international agreement, he added.

"We have to stay within this framework", Mavromichalis said of the 12-page document. During future negotiations, it will no longer be possible to re-discuss everything that doesn’t suit either side. “Otherwise, we would have wasted our time,” said the diplomat. “But individual points can always be improved,” he told Swiss public broadcaster SRF. ...

A two-week campaign in Switzerland called “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence” aims to draw attention to widespread psychological violence against women and LGBTQIA+ people, which can have serious and even fatal consequences.

Insults, humiliation, threats, harassment and control: these are all forms of psychological violence, explains the feminist peace NGO Frieda as the campaign was launched on Saturday.

Violence is often subtle and invisible from the outside. It is part of the spiral of domestic violence and constitutes the most widespread form in couple relationships. ...

Swiss energy company BKW has joined forces with French firm Electra to install 600 fast-charging stations for electric vehicles at 100 different locations in Switzerland.

The system is due to be rolled out over the next three years.

Based in Paris, Electra is represented in eight European countries, BKW said on Friday. The company has been operating in Switzerland since May, and aims to set up the most extensive recharging network in Europe. ...

The number of primary care doctors per head of population is twice as high in towns as in the countryside.

There are one per 1,000 inhabitants in towns and cities, compared with 0.4 in the countryside. Doctors in rural areas also work more hours, 8% more per week.

At the end of 2021, 9184 primary care doctors were practising in Switzerland, the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) reported on Friday. Of these, 4,785 were men (4,059 full-time equivalent, FTE) and 4,399 were women (3,115 FTE).

Women are still significantly worse off than men when it comes to occupational pensions. This is confirmed by new statistics.

In 2022, women received an average of CHF1,217 ($1,376) per month from the 2nd pillar, compared to CHF 2077 for men.

The median amount of lump-sum benefits paid out by pension funds and vested benefits institutions was just under CHF153,564 for men and CHF65,622 for women, according to new pension statistics published on Friday by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). this means that 50% of the pensions paid out were higher and 50% lower than this amount. ...

On Friday, government representatives from canton of Bern and Jura signed an agreement for the village of Moutier's change of canton.

It regulates the most important points so that Moutier can make the administrative switch from canton Bern to canton Jura at the beginning of 2026.

The next step is for the two cantonal parliaments to approve the concordat, or agreement. The consultation carried out last summer broadly confirmed a solution had been worked out. ...

After weeks of deliberation in the House of Representative’s Finance Committee, the upshot is additional funds for agriculture, offset by reductions in asylum and regional policy.

The intricacies of the discussions were compounded by debates surrounding the debt ceiling.

Shortly before the end of the budget deliberations, there was a structural deficit of CHF75.4 million ($85.3 million), as the parliamentary services announced on Thursday. As this would not have fulfilled the requirements of the debt brake, the committee decided to revert to some of the decisions it had already made and save CHF85 million. ...

The first companies in Switzerland are covering the costs of egg freezing.

Since October began, multiple companies, including the pharmaceutical giant Merck, have started covering the expenses associated with egg freezing for female employees opting for this precautionary measure.

Florian Schick, the Director of Merck Switzerland, highlighted this initiative as a key component of fostering a better work-life balance during an interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency. The overarching goal is to contribute to the establishment of a more inclusive and diverse working environment. ...

The interim abbot of the Abbey of Saint-Maurice in southwestern Switzerland, Roland Jaquenoud, has stepped down from his position, the abbey announced on Thursday. An apostolic delegate appointed by Rome will now lead the community.

The interim abbot had already been suspended on Monday by canton Valais from his duties as a teacher at the secondary school. This decision followed the revelations of sexual abuse in an investigation by Swiss public television RTS. ...

Mycoplasmal pneumonia, which had disappeared thanks to measures to combat Covid-19, is making a comeback. After an absence of more than three years, it has returned to pre-pandemic levels, says a Zurich study published in the journal The Lancet Microbe.

"From a scientific point of view, it was absolutely fascinating", Patrick Meyer Sauteur, from the University Children's Hospital in Zurich, told the Keystone-SDA news agency.

The measures taken during the Covid-19 pandemic also led to a decline in other pathogens, but all of them then rapidly re-appeared, with the notable exception of mycoplasma, explained the researcher. Only a few isolated outbreaks were reported, according to a study by the same team published in July. ...

The financial sector remained a major contributor to the Swiss economy in 2022 in terms of growth, employment and tax revenue. The collapse of Credit Suisse and its takeover by UBS last spring are likely to affect the labour market in particular.

Last year, the industry employed 234,600 full-time equivalents (FTEs), or 5.4% of all salaried jobs in the country, according to a study published on Thursday by the economic research institute BAK Economics on behalf of the Swiss Bankers Association and the Swiss Insurance Association. ...

Vaccines against measles, mumps, rubella and polio are in short supply in Switzerland. According to the Federal Office for National Economic Supply, several other shortages of medicines have not yet been overcome.

The Priorix vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella is currently out of stock, the office told news agency Keystone-SDA on Thursday. Clarifications are currently being sought so that measures can be taken. Possible alternative suppliers are also being investigated.

As the triple vaccine Boostrix against diphtheria, pertussis and poliomyelitis is currently only available to a limited extent, mandatory reserves have had to be opened. However, the quantity available is not enough to fully supply the market. Some vaccinations will have to be postponed. ...

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Metrology (Metas) have discovered a fiber optic network that can be used to predict earthquakes and tsunamis.

This cost-effective method allows the precise measurement of earthquakes on the ocean floor or in countries that lack funding for a sufficiently dense measurement network, ETH Zurich announced on Thursday. ...

The government approved a package of measures on Wednesday to advance digitalisation in the healthcare sector. The “DigiSanté” programme is expected to cost around CHF400 million ($452 million) between 2025 and 2034.

Parliament will decide on a corresponding commitment loan, as announced on Thursday. The federal government wants to use the money to consistently digitise health-related government services such as registers, reporting systems or information platforms and ensure that these can communicate with other IT systems. ...