On the sidelines of Art Basel, the FOC presents the Swiss Art Awards 2014 in the presence of Alain Berset: eight artists, including !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Vanessa Billy, Claudia Comte and Emilie Ding, an architects’ collective and an art mediator. He opens with Arnold Böcklin, a member of the first Federal Art Commission in 1888: “Nichts […]
On the Sunday morning of the Federal Yodelling Festival, at the Davos ice rink, Alain Berset brings the greetings of the Federal Council. Two years after the French-speaking Swiss yodelling festival, he no longer calls himself a novice: he knows that the glottal stroke has nothing of a combat sport. “Wir müssen also gar nicht […]
Alain Berset celebrates National Day in La Chaux-de-Fonds. He starts from the bust of Louis Chevrolet, a native of the town, and the motto engraved on a memorial in Indianapolis: “Never give up”. The town, shaken by the watchmaking crisis of the 1970s, managed to diversify. His message, “Let us learn to appreciate otherness”: 130 […]
On the Martigny square, a symbol of Sursee’s twinning with the Valais town, Alain Berset gives a National Day speech devoted to cohesion: “Wir sind das Land der Brückenbauer.” He recalls the great Swiss engineers, including Othmar Ammann from Schaffhausen, whom he presents as the builder of the Golden Gate Bridge. “Auch als politische Brückenbauer […]
Alain Berset opens the 67th Festival at the town’s reception, alongside Mayor Carla Speziali, President Marco Solari and Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian. He issues a warning there: a few months before the Milan Expo, “it would be highly regrettable if Ticino did not take part”. On 7 August, before the press, he presents the main […]
Alain Berset addresses the 92nd Congress of the Swiss Abroad. He opens with a list: without the Swiss Abroad, no Ritz hotel, no Chevrolet, no Golden Gate Bridge, no Madame Tussaud. If they formed a canton, with nearly 750,000 people, it would be the fourth largest in the country. His title states the point: “Niemand […]
At the Kleine Scheidegg, facing the Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau, Alain Berset hosts the “health quintet”: Hermann Gröhe (Germany), Alois Stöger (Austria), Lydia Mutsch (Luxembourg) and Mauro Pedrazzini (Liechtenstein). It is the second meeting, after Münster in 2013, and the first with five participants. The ministers discuss quality and patient safety: in Switzerland, […]
The parliamentary group for culture holds its first “Kulturgipfel”, devoted to the Culture Message 2016–2019. Alain Berset compares the exercise to mountaineering: one meets political pitfalls, perhaps crevasses. He quotes Daudet’s Tartarin, who is told that Switzerland is an open “Kursaal”. The substance concerns cohesion and languages: “Wenn wir die Sprachfrage nicht mehr ernst nehmen, […]
Five months after Vienna, Alain Berset receives the Austrian Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, Rudolf Hundstorfer, in Fribourg. On the agenda: Old-Age Provision 2020, demographic ageing and invalidity insurance. To show reintegration in practice, the two ministers visit a crêperie that employs people with disabilities and a centre for socio-professional integration. The Austrian minister […]
At the publishers’ congress, Alain Berset gives his clearest speech of the year on Swiss identity: “Verschweizerung – aber richtig!”. He opens with Einstein: if the world were to end, he would want to be in Switzerland, where everything happens a little later. Globalisation and Europeanisation are questioning Swiss identity. “Die einfachste Antwort wäre natürlich […]
Alain Berset presents the Distinction romande d’architecture. He opens with a story by Thomas Bernhard, in “The Voice Imitator”: the mayors of Pisa and Venice wanted to swap the leaning tower and the campanile, and ended up committed to an asylum. From it he draws a reflection on the link between architecture, place and identity. […]
Alain Berset opens the Comptoir Suisse, whose guest of honour is the Swiss National Park. He begins by quoting the speech given at the same place in 1962 by the Vaud Federal Councillor Paul Chaudet, chiselled in a “technical federal language”. He uses it to talk about the role of national fairs in a prosperous […]
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