Tag Archives: Editor’s Choice

On 1 January 2021, Swiss pump prices are set to rise by 3.7 cents per litre. © Frischschoggi | Dreamstime.comFrom 1 January 2021, the total taxes on a litre of petrol and diesel in Switzerland will be 77 and 80 cents respectively. At a price of CHF 1.50 litre, taxes will make up over half the price of a litre of fuel in Switzerland. The 3.7 cent tax hike, which is set to run until 2028, was adopted by the Federal Council on 1 July 2020. The increase aims to allow the government to...

Normally Geneva airport is overrun with passengers during the Christmas period. This year there were 84% fewer passengers than last year, according to RTS. © Hai Huy Ton That | Dreamstime.comBetween 23 and 27 December 2020, there were around 47,000 passengers, down from the 300,000 that passed through the airport during the same period in 2019. The largest number of passengers typically depart for Portugal, followed by France, Spain, Italy, the UAE and the Netherlands. The flow in the...

© Pressmaster | Dreamstime.com Restaurants and cafés will progressively close once more across French-speaking Switzerland starting in the canton of Jura on Tuesday 22 December 2020. On 18 December 2020, Switzerland’s Federal Council decided to close restaurants, bars, cultural venues and sports and leisure facilities from 22 December 2020. However, exceptions were allowed in cantons with R-numbers (reproduction rates) below 1 and 7-day infection rates below the...

© Laurentiu Iordache | Dreamstime.com Following the discovery of a new, more contagious variant of the coronavirus in the UK and South Africa, the Federal Council today decided to take steps to prevent the further spread of this new virus strain. On Sunday, 20 December 2020, all flights to and from these countries to Switzerland were halted from midnight. Today, the Swiss government announced that all those who have entered Switzerland from these two countries since...

© Banol2007 | Dreamstime.com Late on 20 December 2020, the Swiss government decided to suspend flights to Switzerland from the UK and South Africa following news of the discovery a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 virus. The decision by the Swiss government follows similar decisions by Germany, France, Italy, Ireland, Belgium and the Netherland. Air, road, rail and maritime links are to be suspended too. The suspension starts at midnight on Sunday, 20 December 2020 and...

This week, the US Treasury reviewed and assessed the currency policies of 20 major U.S. trading partners during the four quarters ending June 2020. © Marekusz | Dreamstime.comThe report concluded that both Vietnam and Switzerland met all three criteria for currency manipulation under the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015. The three tests include a significant bilateral trade surplus with the United States, a material current account surplus of at least 2% of GDP over...

An update to an antibody study conducted by HUG and UNIGE suggests that 22% of Geneva’s population had been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus by December 2020. The study which began earlier in the year, and involved 2,072 people, suggests the number of people infected has doubled since June 2020 when 11% of the study sample tested positive for antibodies. © Tero Vesalainen | Dreamstime.com The latest results suggest the official number of cases significantly...

© Leigh Prather | Dreamstime.com Mistrust of vaccines against Covid-19 continues to rise in Switzerland, according to a recently published survey. A survey run in Switzerland at the end of October 2020, found that only 49% were prepared to take a Covid-19 vaccine, a percentage significantly lower than the 62% recorded in a similar survey in April 2020. Of the other 51%, 25% said they would not take a vaccine for Covid-19 and 26% said they did not know whether they...

On 16 December 2020, Switzerland’s Council of States, the nation’s upper house, accepted a 2021 budget deeply in the red following its acceptance last week by the National Council. © Denis Linine | Dreamstime.comIn 2021, Switzerland’s federal government plans to collect CHF 75.8 billion while spending CHF 81.9 billion, plunging the budget CHF 6.1 billion into the red. The pandemic has significantly increased spending. Spending in 2021 is expected to be 8.8% higher than in 2020 and the...

Speaking to broadcaster RTS, Swiss health minister Alain Berset said the pandemic was under control and that it currently made no sense to declare an extraordinary situation, a provision in Swiss law on managing infectious diseases that allows the Federal Council to take charge of the situation over and above cantonal governments. Declaring an extraordinary situation would be pointless right now, said Berset. We currently have all the tools we need to act and we must...