Author: switzerlandtimes.ch

Switzerland’s government is stepping up support for forestry and agriculture, two sectors hit particularly hard by drought and extreme heat. On Wednesday the Federal Council approved CHF 17.5m for forests and CHF 54m for farms. Switzerland is enduring an exceptional drought. Never before has the country recorded so little rainfall by mid-August, Albert Rösti, the environment minister, told reporters in Bern. The duration of the dry spell, he said, is putting pressure on vulnerable people, livestock, waterways, ecosystems, forests, farming, power generation and river transport. The government is therefore taking short- and medium-term measures in forestry and agriculture, arguing that…

Revoking Swiss citizenship requires compelling grounds. Support for terrorism can provide them. Switzerland’s Federal Administrative Court has now upheld denaturalisation in an unusual case, reported SRF. The case concerns a 36-year-old man who was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina and became a naturalised Swiss citizen as a child. Five years ago a French court sentenced him to several years in prison for helping to prepare terrorist acts. He had run propaganda channels for Islamic State (IS) and recruited new members for the group. Soon after the French judgment, Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) began proceedings of its own. In…

Asked what sort of country they would like to live in, the Swiss favour nature, local production and personal freedom—and are distinctly cool on a future run by artificial intelligence. Futurologists tend to be more interested in what is new than in what works. The Swiss, it seems, are less drawn to novelty. A new survey by Monda Futura, a Swiss non-profit group, asked people not what they feared about the future but what sort of future they could live with. Its Schweizer Zukunftskompass 2026 combines ideas gathered from more than 1,300 participants with a representative survey of 2,203 people…

Switzerland’s economy grew by 1.6% in real terms in 2025, compared with 1.5% in 2024. The broadly steady pace of expansion was driven mainly by strong domestic demand, which rose by 2.5%. Investment was particularly buoyant, increasing by 3.5%, reported the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). The 2025 figure is slightly below Switzerland’s recent long-run norm. Annual real GDP growth from 2005 to 2024, Switzerland grew by about 2.0% a year on average. The period includes the global financial crisis, the pandemic recession and the strong post-pandemic rebound. Gross national income (GNI), measured at current prices, rose by 2.5%, helped by…

Unemployment among graduates from Swiss universities and universities of applied sciences increased between 2023 and 2025, according to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). One year after graduation, the unemployment rate as defined by the International Labour Organisation rose from 3.9% to 6.4% among holders of a university master’s degree, and from 3.4% to 4.9% among graduates with a bachelor’s degree from a university of applied sciences. By contrast, the rate among graduates of teacher-training universities remained low, at 0.7%.The figures come from the FSO’s survey of higher-education graduates, published on August 27th 2026. As with the class of 2022, unemployment…

Employment in Switzerland continued to rise in the second quarter of 2026, according to the Federal Statistical Office. Most of the new jobs were in services, while the number of vacancies was also higher than a year earlier. At the end of June, companies outside agriculture employed 5.698m people. Of these, 2.388m worked part-time. Women accounted for 68.2% of part-time workers. On a full-time-equivalent basis, employment amounted to 4.435m jobs, up by 82,700, or 1.9%, from a year earlier. Women accounted for 40.5% of full-time-equivalent employment. Overall employment rose by 111,800 jobs, or 2%, year on year. Women made up…

Switzerland and China have concluded negotiations on an upgraded trade agreement that would remove tariffs on almost all Swiss exports to China. Guy Parmelin, Switzerland’s economy minister, and Wang Wentao, his Chinese counterpart, announced the deal on Thursday. Under the revised agreement, 99.8% of current Swiss exports to China would eventually be exempt from customs duties, the Swiss government said. Bern estimates that Swiss exporters could save around CHF 244m a year. Roughly three-quarters of the new tariff exemptions would take effect as soon as the agreement entered into force. Mr Parmelin and Mr Wang signed a memorandum of understanding…

In a poll run for Switzerland’s public broadcaster, more than half of Swiss voters intend to reject a proposal to enshrine perpetual and armed neutrality in the constitution, A separate initiative on food policy remains too close to call. The neutrality initiative, launched by Pro Suisse, would strengthen the constitutional basis of Swiss neutrality. If the vote had taken place in early August, 54% would have rejected it and 42% would have supported it, according to a survey by gfs.bern for the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG SSR), published on Friday. The second proposal on the ballot, the “For Secure Food”…

With inflation running at just 0.4%, the battle over wages in 2027 may be as much about productivity growth as lost purchasing power. In any case Switzerland’s wage negotiations for 2027 are shaping up to be contentious. Travail.Suisse, a trade-union federation, is demanding an across-the-board pay rise of 2%. The Swiss Employers’ Association, by contrast, reckons an average increase of around 1% would be more realistic. The unions’ demand is an average and varies considerably by industry. In healthcare, Syna, one of Travail.Suisse’s member unions, is calling for increases of 5-6%, arguing that modest wage settlements in recent years have…

A committee of Switzerland’s Council of States wants to introduce an immigration levy on workers from the European Union if migration rises sharply after the Bilateral Agreements III enter into force, reported RTS. Andrea Caroni, a member of the Council of States, says the measure could be used only after the Federal Council had successfully invoked the safeguard clause. Someone who had recently immigrated to Switzerland would then have to pay a fee once a year. Mr Caroni said the levy would amount to at least CHF 4,000 a year. A lower charge would apply to people arriving under family…