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The Covid-19 pandemic plunged Switzerland’s budget into the red in 2020 and 2021. The federal government expects to return to normality with a balanced budget in 2022. © Asdf_1 | Dreamstime.comOn 30 June 2021, the Federal Council approved the outlines of a federal budget for 2022 and a financial plan for the period from 2023 to 2025. The balanced 2022 budget follows two years of pandemic-induced negative results. By the end of June 2021, the federal government had approved nearly...

On 1 July 2021, Switzerland’s revised telecommunications law came into effect. The new rules force mobile providers to make certain changes to deals they offer customers when roaming. Some of the resulting changes are positive, but not all. In addition, some operators have retained bundles that don’t comply with the new rules. © Jekaterina Voronina | Dreamstime.comThe new rules force mobile operators to change for roaming calls in increments of a second instead of increments of a minute,...

Import quotas to protect farmers from outside competition are tightly managed in Switzerland. However, when Swiss farm production dips or demand rises, quotas are often eased to allow more low tariff imports. © Yasuhiro Amano | Dreamstime.comThis week, Switzerland’s government extended quotas on butter and potatoes in response to shortages. On 22 June 2021, Switzerland’s Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG) announced it would increase the amount of butter that can be imported into...

In 2021, Switzerland had the highest innovation score in Europe, according to a report published by the European Commission this week. © Diego Grandi | Dreamstime.comSwitzerland’s innovation score of 162.3 put it comfortably ahead of Sweden (156.5), the European nation in second place. The score measures innovation across 12 areas, which include workforce education, research systems (international research publications), digitalisation, finance and support, investment, use of IT,...

Over the weekend, a majority of voters in the canton of Basel-City voted in favour of a minimum wage of CHF 21 (US$ 23) an hour. © Andreadonetti | Dreamstime.comThe move will make Basel-City the first German-speaking Swiss canton to adopt a minimum wage, following in the footsteps of Geneva, Neuchâtel, Jura and Ticino. Until fairly recently Switzerland had no minimum wages. In 2011, voters in Neuchâtel voted in favour of a minimum wage, which was introduced in 2017. Jura followed with...

On 13 June 2021, Swiss voters will decide on whether to accept a government plan to raise taxes on certain high emission activities, which include additional taxes on heating oil, flights and petrol and diesel for road use. © Heiko Kueverling | Dreamstime.comThe aim of the revised law is to change behaviour and reduce Switzerland’s emissions. The amount that the proposed taxes would cost an average family range from around CHF 100 to CHF 1,000 depending on who is calculating it. In...

This week, Switzerland’s parliament voted in favour of raising the official retirement age for women. © Lightfieldstudiosprod | Dreamstime.comIn Switzerland, the retirement age for women has long been 64, one year less than the retirement age of 65 for men, according to RTS. The parliamentary vote, of 124 versus 69 in favour, follows a vote in the upper house that also favoured the change. Opposition from politicians on the left was insufficient to prevent the recent parliamentary...

By the end of May 2021, the percentage of Switzerland’s workforce registered as out of work had fallen to 3.1%, down from 3.3% in April 2021. © Rafael Ben Ari | Dreamstime.comThe figures are based on those registered as unemployed at regional employment centres and exclude many of those that have been out of for more than two years and have exhausted their rights to collect unemployment benefits. Many measures of unemployment, such as the one recommended by the International Labour...

Last week, negotiations between Switzerland and the EU ended after failure to find agreement on key elements of a deal governing the relationship between Switzerland and the bloc. Over the weekend, Switzerland’s president Guy Parmelin defended the abrupt break in negotiations and sent a clear message to EU strategists in Brussels. Speaking to the newspaper NZZ am Sonntag Parmelin said that the EU would harm itself if it sank trade relations with one of its most important trading...

A recent study by Interpharma and Santésuisse shows how rapidly drug prices have risen in Switzerland over the 10 years to 2020. © Artemiy Sobov | Dreamstime.comBetween 2010 and 2020, medicine prices have risen by nearly 37% in Switzerland. In addition, the cost of basic health insurance has risen at 3 times the rate of GDP over the same period. There are three main reasons for high Swiss drug prices according to the report: too many generic drugs, excessive margins and high factory...