The Federal Council adopts the main lines of the reform. The Federal Department of Home Affairs presents them to the press. The aim: to maintain the level of benefits and consolidate financing, through a comprehensive approach to the first and second pillars, in a single dispatch. The measures: a reference age of 65 for women […]
At the health economy forum of the tri-border region, Alain Berset greets the German and French specialists in the “Champions-League-Stadt der Schweiz”. He is surprised that the most gratifying fact of all, rising life expectancy, is mainly discussed as a problem. He therefore proposes a change of vocabulary: to speak of “longevity gains” rather than […]
A week after the guidelines, Alain Berset presents the reform to the cantonal directors of social affairs. He opens with Woody Allen, who imagined living life backwards: starting out dead, leaving the old people’s home too fit, drawing a pension before working. Then the apprentice he met at Swissmem: “Du kannst auf deine Altersvorsorge zählen.” […]
Before the Swiss Trade Association, Alain Berset begins with the Paris metro station “Arts et Métiers”, its portholes and copper plates: one could believe oneself in Captain Nemo’s Nautilus. SMEs, he says, are the heirs to this history, the backbone of the economy and the guarantee of high-quality vocational training. He defends Old-Age Provision 2020 […]
A National Day speech against withdrawal. In troubled times, says Alain Berset, societies turn towards the past. He cites youth unemployment at 60% in southern Europe, the difficulties of the over-50s in finding work again in Switzerland, “eine Zeit-Bombe”, and a world that has become multipolar. He addresses the relationship with the European Union and […]
The same evening, in Moudon, Alain Berset gives the French version of the Stansstad speech: “When the past carries the future”. The maxim “it was better before”, he says, does not answer the anxieties of an unstable era. “Closing the door and waiting until nothing works any more is not an attitude worthy of Switzerland. […]
On 1 August, Alain Berset speaks in Rümlang, in the canton of Zurich. The speech takes up the Stansstad one: the European crisis, older workers, a multipolar world, the relationship with the European Union and the financial centre. He adds a passage on Kleinjogg, the 18th-century Zurich reforming farmer admired by Goethe. The conclusion does […]
On 7 August, on the Piazza Grande, Alain Berset opens the first edition directed by Carlo Chatrian. The festival, he says, is “the gold prospector’s sieve”. He ends with the American critic Roger Ebert, honoured at Locarno this year: there must be another world somewhere, “a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers live”. At […]
On behalf of the Federal Council, Alain Berset recommends accepting the revised Epidemics Act, put to the vote on 22 September. The 1970 act no longer offers enough protection against threats such as SARS. The revision is to enable the Confederation and the cantons to act faster, manage crises better and combat antibiotic resistance and […]
Three months after Li Bin’s invitation in Geneva, Alain Berset spends four days in Beijing and Shanghai, with State Councillors Carlo Conti (Basel-Stadt), President of the GDK, and Pierre-François Unger (Geneva), whose cantons have partnerships with Chinese hospitals, and a medical technology delegation. On 15 August, at Peking University, he opens a conference on infectious […]
Before more than 230 representatives of Switzerland abroad, Alain Berset speaks about political leadership in the information age. The printing press, he recalls, made the Reformation possible when Luther only wanted a theological debate. The Internet will have consequences on the same scale. Three changes, in his view: knowledge is becoming democratised, which means involving […]
Back from China, Alain Berset defends the Epidemics Act in Schaffhausen. He sets two answers against each other on the question of good politics: Max Weber’s, passion, responsibility, a sense of proportion, and the town’s motto, “Lappi tue d’Auge uf!”. In Beijing and Shanghai, he says, people told him they envied the quality of the […]
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