Europa Forum Lucerne: reform against populism

At the Europa Forum in Lucerne, Alain Berset gives one of the major speeches of the year. He starts from the cliché of a boring Switzerland: “Wir arbeiten hart an unserer Langeweile!” Stability comes from movement: debating without holding back, then coming together again.

The capacity for reform is his answer to the West’s identity crisis. He gives his definition of populism: people who name real problems but are more interested in exploiting them politically than in solving them. On Europe: “Eine Schweiz, die einfach nur die Schweiz ist, ist irgendwann nicht mehr die Schweiz.”

Speeches on this site

• Europa Forum Lucerne (in German, French-language page)