Swiss Watching: Inside the Land of Milk and Money

by Diccon Bewes

Whereas its cold counterpart, the Bise, blasts chilly air down from the north, the Föhn is a wind that comes from the south over the Alps. It generally brings warm, dry air, hence its name; Föhn is German for hairdryer, though who knows which came first. But this can be quite some hairdryer, with wind speeds regularly over 100 kilometres an hour17 and dramatic temperature changes. It’s not unusual for it to be 25°C where the Föhn is blowing and 6°C a few valleys away. Perhaps it’s this atmospheric disturbance that makes the Föhn an ill wind for the Swiss, blamed for causing migraines, suicides and generally unsettling everyone. More likely it’s just an extrapolation of the Swiss hatred of draughts in any shape or form. What to you and me is a breath of fresh air to many Swiss is the cause of every illness known to man.

The cantons are so independently minded that it can sometimes seem as if there isn’t one Switzerland but 26 mini ones, all going in roughly the same direction but each doing their own thing. This is such a part of Swiss life that they have a word for it, Kantönligeist. The polite translation is that each canton has its own identity, culture and history; the more realistic is that each is as bloody-minded as its neighbour. And, as cantonal differences are fiercely defended, they’re unlikely to disappear any time soon. But it is exactly those differences that make Switzerland a uniquely fascinating place, sometimes making it feel like a country in name only.

Even in today’s united country, each of the five large cities has its role: Bern, site of the federal government, is the political centre; Basel, thanks to the pharmaceutical companies, the industrial one; Lausanne, home of the Supreme Court, the legal; Geneva, HQ for the United Nations, the international; and Zurich, the biggest of the five, the economic.

Their most famous moment was perhaps their futile defence of the Tuileries Palace during the French Revolution when over 600 died, a massacre commemorated today by the forlorn Lion Monument in Lucerne.

And in Bern there’s a physical reminder of his army’s presence: the street signs in the city centre are still in five different colours, a system used to help illiterate French troops find their quarters. In some streets signs are green on one side, yellow on the other; a little historical anomaly that modern tourists barely notice as they take photos.

Germany had its Baader-Meinhof gang, Italy its Red Brigade, Britain the IRA and Switzerland Les Béliers. These separatists wanted Jura, then part of Canton Bern, to be a separate canton, but this being Switzerland there were no car bombs or assassinations. The battle was fought with the ballot box not with bullets, though it was sometimes accompanied by riots and petrol bombs. It took a while, and a few referenda, but in 1979 Jura finally became the newest canton.13 That means its 70,000 inhabitants make up the last section of Swiss Path before it ends in Brunnen, the town at the junction of Lakes Lucerne and Uri.

The easy one is Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified, followed seven weeks later by Pentecost, also known as Whitsun, when the 11 remaining Apostles received the Holy Spirit. Ten days after that is Corpus Christi, which celebrates the Eucharist rather than a specific event, and finally comes the Feast of the Assumption on 15 August, when Mary went up to heaven.

Visit a Protestant city like Bern on 8 December, and it’s likely that the streets will be packed and the Christmas market full. That’s not because it’s a few weeks before the big event but because that date is a Catholic holiday, celebrating the Immaculate Conception.

However, the best canton to live in is Ticino, the Italian-speaking one south of the Alps, and not just for the food. The rest of Switzerland may cast aspersions on the Ticinese work ethic, or lack thereof, but it’s surely no coincidence that this is the canton with more public holidays than any other. In addition to the seven recognised nationally, the Ticinese get another eight to enjoy. That’s fifteen in total.

Visit almost any Swiss town or village and there’s one quick way to tell if the church is Protestant or Catholic: look up and see what’s on top of the spire or tower. Usually a cockerel means it’s a Protestant church, a cross means it’s Catholic.

For all its overt Catholicness, Einsiedeln is only an hour from Zurich, the cradle of Swiss Protestantism. Two towns, two beliefs, two worlds apart. Only 40 kilometres separates two of Switzerland’s greatest religious landmarks, the Grossmünster in Zurich and the monastery in Einsiedeln, but the gulf between them is huge.

Zwingli is the forgotten third man of the Reformation; Martin Luther and Jean Calvin get all the press.

But not everything was banned. Hard work was fine, as was prayer and, more surprisingly, so was charging interest on a loan. The age-old religious objection to usury was put aside and, hey presto, the Swiss banking industry was born. For this reason, Calvinism is seen by many as the origin of modern capitalism, though all that endless work might have played a role.

Too serious even for the Swiss, with no joie de vivre here in any language. The Protestant work ethic seems to have seeped into the buildings, the streets and the people.

the canton’s parliament, or Landsgemeinde, which occurs every year on the last Sunday in April.1 Appenzell Innerrhoden is one of only two cantons (Glarus is the other) where an open-air parliament is still used to decide municipal affairs, vote on referenda and elect the cantonal government. Every citizen entitled to vote can attend and votes are taken by the raising of hands.

Even though its sister half-canton, Ausserrhoden, abandoned its Landsgemeinde in the late 1990s, Innerrhoden shows no sign of following suit. Things change very slowly here. After all, this was the last canton in Switzerland to (reluctantly) give women the vote in cantonal matters. In 1991. No, that’s not a typo.

At federal level, Swiss women had been able to vote since 1971 (itself shockingly late),

The obligatory referendum. This does what it says on the tin, and must follow any constitutional amendment or binding application to join international organisations like the EU. The optional referendum. Parliamentary decisions and legislation can be put to a popular vote, but only if 50,000 valid signatures are collected within 100 days. This threat of rejection by the voters is the main force behind making most legislation a compromise acceptable to the majority. The popular initiative. Anyone can propose a vote to change the constitution on any issue, as long as it doesn’t violate either the constitution or international law. Proposers have 18 months to collect 100,000 valid signatures in order to force a vote, be that on abolishing the army (failed) or joining the UN (passed).5 This can be thought of as the people’s referendum. The counter-proposal. If parliament disagrees with a popular initiative, it can put forward its own alternative. Both are voted on at the same time and, bizarrely, both can be approved, known as a double yes. The one with the most yes votes is the winner.6

For your average referendum, of which there are lots, a simple majority of the national vote is needed. Popular initiatives rarely manage even this; fewer than 10 per cent pass, making most of them unpopular initiatives. In addition to this electoral majority, all obligatory referenda and popular initiatives also need a cantonal majority. It’s a mechanism to protect the small, and generally more conservative, cantons from being outvoted, but it gives them disproportionate influence. Each canton is equivalent to one vote, so Canton Geneva, with its 200,000 or so voters, is equal to Canton Uri with 25,000. The exceptions are the six half-cantons, which only count as half a vote each, so that even though there are officially 26 cantons, a majority of 12 is needed in a referendum.10 In a close vote this can make all the difference. The irony is that changing this double-majority system requires a constitutional amendment, which needs double-majority approval. Since the small cantons are probably not going to vote for their own emasculation, it’s unlikely to happen.

Transforming a popular initiative into an act of parliament, or getting a law passed by the people, can take years. Parliament approved giving women the right to vote in 1959, but it took another 12 years before the (male) voters agreed.11

Incidentally, for German speakers there’s a clear distinction between voting in a referendum (abstimmen) and voting in an election (wählen).

The government itself is known as the Bundesrat, or Federal Council. It consists of seven members and is a permanent coalition, with no one party or person ever in control. Each Federal Councillor is in charge of a department of state, such as the self-explanatory Finance or Foreign Affairs, or more nebulous Home Affairs, which covers everything from health and social security to statistics and culture. Or (my personal favourite) Defence, Civil Protection and Sports; Switzerland is possibly the only country to have a Defence Minister responsible for PE. The Councillors take it in turns to be president for a year, while still running their own department. Not that the President has any more power, but someone has to shake hands with visiting leaders and make a speech on 1 August.

that 25 per cent of Switzerland’s population is not actually Swiss.

This is their recipe for success, which dates back to the momentous vote in December 1992 when a young Christoph Blocher led the SVP to defeat Switzerland’s application to join the European Economic Area (EEA). Every other party, trade union and business organisation were united in supporting the government’s European policy, with the EEA seen as the first step towards European Union membership. But joining the EEA was subject to an obligatory referendum and that’s where Herr Blocher stepped into the picture. And won. But only just. With over 3.5 million votes cast, the No side won with a majority of 23,836, or 50.3 per cent.

Having helped the right-wing SVP win the previous election, he was brought back in 2010 for his real purpose, one that made the minaret ban look tame. This time it wasn’t just Muslims who were targeted by the latest SVP hate campaign, but all foreigners. The Ausschaffungsinitiative, or deportation initiative, was a popular initiative that proposed automatically expelling foreign criminals, from rapists down to benefit cheats, back to their country of origin. No appeals, no exceptions. For Secondos born and brought up in Switzerland that might mean being sent back to some tiny village in southern Italy that their grandparents left in the 1960s. Funnily enough, the SVP’s list of crimes worthy of expulsion didn’t include corporate fraud, tax dodging or secreting away ill-gotten gains. Clearly those sorts of foreign criminals are welcome to stay, presumably because they aren’t a threat to little old ladies, but most likely because they make the country richer and the SVP didn’t want to alienate its friends in big business.

The average referendum turnout is even lower, normally around 40 per cent. This seems rather odd, given that in many ways a referendum has more direct influence than a general election; each vote really does count. Perhaps being asked to make judgements so often affects the level of participation. Or more likely, most voters are content with the status quo and prefer not to get involved or push for change. What is noticeable is that when something really important comes along, turnout shoots up: 69 per cent in the vote to abolish the army in 1989, and 78 per cent in the EEA vote of 1992.42

But for many in the English-speaking world, Zurich brings one image to mind: grey-suited bankers. Back when the pound in your pocket was still worth twenty shillings, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson damned them to be known for ever more as the gnomes of Zurich.

Swiss banks are regarded as part of the community, there to act as safe houses against uncertainty and guarantors of stability. It’s this that always made them attractive to foreigners long before banking secrecy was legally protected. In contrast, the banking ethos in Britain and America shifted ages ago to making money and taking risks, bringing both the bankers and the economy more wealth. That’s so very un-Swiss, but Swiss banks got sucked into this money-spinning whirlwind and have been paying the price. The head of UBS stepped down in 2011 after a rogue trader in London had lost the bank two billion francs. Having been bailed out by the government, fined for helping rich Americans evade their taxes and cut thousands of jobs, it hadn’t been a good couple of years for Switzerland’s biggest bank.

The collapse of Wegelin, Switzerland’s oldest private bank, and its federal indictment in the US are proof of how far Swiss banks have fallen. The Swiss banking system is no longer a stereotypically smooth machine, nor is its future as gold-plated as it once was. It might remain at the heart of Switzerland’s economy, but it may well need a transplant some time soon.

The income tax you pay is based not only on what you earn but on where you live, with each municipality setting its own rates. Keep the same job but move house to another town, even within the same canton, and the tax will be different.

When one Swiss banker (and politician; the two are not mutually exclusive) was asked why anyone would hide their money from the state unless they wanted to avoid taxes, his answer was typically Swiss: there’s no reason for the state not to trust its citizens, so no reason for it to be allowed to inspect an individual’s finances.4 It’s a view of the world that continues to cause problems.

This aversion to mentioning money includes not putting any salary details in job adverts, because doing that would mean everyone else would know how much you earn. And that wouldn’t do at all. So instead, as a prospective employee you must know how much the job should pay and how much you think you’re worth. At the end of the interview comes the moment for discussing your monthly salary, and it’s a surreal one for those not used to the Swiss system. You have to make an offer, which is met with a counter-offer, with both sides bearing in mind that most Swiss companies pay monthly salaries 13 times a year, not 12 – the 13th is for paying your tax bill (see below). Eventually you agree on a figure acceptable to both parties. It may sound more like bartering in a bazaar than a job interview,

Part of the reason is Switzerland’s love–hate relationship with its big neighbour to the north, which is often more hate than love. Germany is often referred to, half-jokingly, as the ‘big canton’ and the recent influx of thousands of Germans into Switzerland6 has raised the tension rather than helped relations. The Germans seem to be the only ones who can make the Swiss feel inferior, and that’s not an easy feat. It’s partly about language. High German, as spoken by the newcomers, is much more direct and less fluffy than the Swiss German dialects so its speakers seem arrogant and rude, at least to Swiss sensibilities.

However, it’s their behaviour after the war that the Swiss perhaps feel most uncomfortable about. That boils down to two words: Nazi gold. They cover a multitude of things, but mainly refer to the gold shipped to Switzerland by the Nazis and the unclaimed Jewish assets sitting in Swiss banks long after the war ended. The issue with the former is that the Swiss didn’t question where the gold originated

The Swiss still use that old Latin saying (but in German), Geld stinkt nicht, which translates literally as ‘money doesn’t smell’ or, better yet, there’s no such thing as dirty money. Never truer than in this case.

In 1995 the World Jewish Congress (WJC), backed by the US Senate, sued for the return of all unclaimed assets from dormant Swiss accounts. And that’s when the Swiss made their biggest mistake. Instead of coming clean the banks fought back, denying responsibility, throwing up endless red tape, and generally making themselves look far worse than they already did. Then they asked for death certificates from concentration camp victims. Oh dear.

Low unemployment, minimal national debt, no housing bubble – while other economies crashed and burned, the Swiss was a beacon of responsibility and prudence, so the demand for francs exploded. With both the euro and US dollar collapsing, 2011 was the year when investors turned to the ever-reliable Swiss franc as a safe haven. It gained up to 30 per cent in value in just 15 months, rushing past parity with the dollar and then reaching it with the euro. Great news for Swiss going abroad, disastrous for Swiss industry dependent on exports and tourism. As quickly as the foreign visitors stopped arriving, the Swiss were leaving to shop in Germany, France and Italy. Same products, half the price. Not only that, but what had been the last resort for the Swiss tourist industry – loyal domestic guests – also started to disappear. Even the most patriotic Swiss realised that switching to a holiday abroad was a bargain not to be missed. The solid Swiss economy was battered from all sides – tourism down, exports down, shops closing down. Having survived the banking and housing crashes, Switzerland finally tasted economic distress, albeit of a very unusual nature. Only the Swiss could turn success into a crisis.

Eventually the Swiss National Bank stepped in and tied the franc to the euro at a minimum rate of 1.20, committing itself to spending whatever it took to achieve that. It proved to be an expensive decision, and ultimately a futile one. By 2015 the National Bank admitted defeat and was forced to let the franc float free again. Not even the Swiss are immune to the power of the money markets.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the last part of Treasure Island while recuperating in Davos, and the town went on to have a starring role in Thomas Mann’s sanatorial epic The Magic Mountain.

The letters actually stand for the Internationales Komitee vom Roten Kreuz, aka the IKRK.

Determined to make a lasting difference, he wrote a slim book, Un Souvenir de Solferino, about the battle, its aftermath and his idea of creating a society of qualified volunteers to provide care in wartime. Dunant paid for the 1600-copy print run, which these days might be called vanity publishing, and sent it to the great and good (and royalty and politicians) across Europe. It was an instant success. Apart from being lionised by Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, the Queen of Prussia and the Empress of Russia, Dunant initially saw few concrete results.

Signed in Geneva’s Hôtel de Ville on 22 August 1864 by 12 states and comprising only 10 articles, it sets out the rules governing the treatment of wounded soldiers on the battlefield. Most importantly, it recognises the neutrality of medical staff, vehicles and buildings, as well as stating that all combatants shall be cared for. And Article 7 says that ‘a distinctive and uniform flag shall be adopted… a red cross on a white ground’.8 An iconic symbol of hope and trust was thus created. What’s more of a surprise is that there are actually four Geneva Conventions. Three more followed for the treatment of wounded sailors, prisoners of war and civilians in wartime, plus additional Protocols to protect victims of armed conflicts, including non-international ones.

The Red Cross’s greatest challenge – and failure – came during the Second World War. None of the then three Geneva Conventions (the fourth was added in 1949) was designed to deal with mass incarceration and murder of civilians, and the Red Cross failed to adapt its policies and procedures to the reality of concentration camps. Another problem was the relationship between the Red Cross and Switzerland, both officially neutral. The former feared that any intervention in Germany would be seen as taking sides, so embarrassing its host nation, and undermine the organisation’s work, limited as it was.

But the invasion never came, and the myth of Fortress Switzerland, with its mountain bunkers and ever-ready army of sharpshooters, was born. The Swiss saw (and many still see) the war as their finest hour, when they stood up to the might of Germany. Hitler might well have been deterred by the prospect of snipers in mountain hideouts, but it’s more likely that he got distracted by bigger things such as invading Russia or rescuing a collapsing Italy. And it didn’t do him any harm to keep the Swiss neutral. That way he could still use their Alpine routes for non-military transport, benefit from their engineering expertise, and hide his gold in their banks.

The Red Cross and its host nation eventually parted company, with the latter becoming an ‘international legal personality’. That’s not a cross between Michael Palin and Perry Mason, but puts the organisation on the same legal footing as the UN. The ICRC is still based in Switzerland but, like an embassy, its premises are no longer Swiss; they are international territory.

Biedermeier

From the age of 20 a Swiss man must complete 260 days of compulsory military service,12 either all at once or in annual stages, before he reaches 34. After his active service time is up, he remains in the reserves for a further ten years and must regularly practise shooting his rifle. Objectors used to go to jail, but in the 1990s the law was finally changed to allow community service instead, though it’s a longer stint of 390 days.13 The Swiss government is looking into extending this obligatory service to women too, but currently they can join in voluntarily; unsurprisingly few do, so that women make up less than 1 per cent of Swiss soldiers.14 It all adds up to an army of over 200,000 that can be called up at any time to defend the country. But the big question is, against whom? Having a permanent army in waiting doesn’t come cheap. Defence annually eats up over 4.5 billion Swiss francs, 7 per cent of the national budget, or more than agriculture.15 Admittedly agriculture now only accounts for 4 per cent of the Swiss economy (despite all those cows) but it’s still quite an achievement for a neutral country that hasn’t been attacked in over 200 years. When a Swiss man is away on his military service, the government pays 80 per cent of his salary.16 Given that, in total, 6.5 million days are needed every year,17 that’s quite a bill for the taxpayer. Not only that, each soldier gets his own rifle and two uniforms to keep at home, so that he is ready at a moment’s notice to...

Swiss Federal Railways becomes SBB (short for Schweizerische Bundesbahnen) in German but, since this is multilingual Switzerland, it’s in French and Italian too. So we also have Chemins de fer fédéraux suisses and Ferrovie federale svizzere, both of which are reduced to their initials. All this means that trains (and timetables, merchandise and tickets) are emblazoned with nine letters: SBB CFF FFS.

Rütli

In 1955 he patented his invention as ‘Velcro’, a contraction of velours and crochet2 (French for velvet and hook respectively).