During the Solothurn Literary Festival, Alain Berset presents the first Swiss Literature Awards. Erica Pedretti, Jean-Marc Lovay and Fabio Pusterla are honoured for their life’s work; the Babel festival in Bellinzona receives two awards, for translation and for literary mediation. He starts from a doubt expressed by Ian McEwan about the point of the novel, […]
Before family doctors, students and junior doctors, Alain Berset takes Leonardo da Vinci as the model of the generalist. Today, 900,000 medical articles are published every year: enough to push even Leonardo into specialisation. His formula: “Die Generalisten sind die Spezialisten für das Allgemeine.” Primary care medicine, he says, must be reinvented and made more […]
At the Palais des Nations, Alain Berset delivers the opening speech on behalf of the host country. The theme of the year: the place of health in the sustainable development agenda after 2015. “Sustainability” yields more than 100 million results online, both gratifying and worrying: the word risks becoming an empty formula. Health, he says, […]
Before the tourism industry, gathered under the theme of the “sacred fire”, Alain Berset recalls that the Swiss rejected more holidays two years earlier. He tells of Queen Victoria being carried up the Rigi in a sedan chair in 1868. The substance: the list of Switzerland’s living traditions, from the Fête des Vignerons to Hornussen […]
Born of an idea launched in Bern in October 2012 with Daniel Bahr, the first meeting brings together in Münster the health ministers of Germany, Austria (Alois Stöger), Luxembourg (Mars Di Bartolomeo) and Switzerland. On 31 May, at the City Hall, they are welcomed by the mayor and sign the city’s Golden Book. On the […]
The association of Genevans in Bern celebrates its hundredth anniversary. Alain Berset times the train journey: 1 hour 41 minutes, of which he mainly knows the last 22. A hundred years ago, Bern was for a Genevan a distant world, “verdigris, austere”, where no wine was produced. The time separating the two cities has shrunk; […]
The Swiss Veterinary Society is 200 years old. Alain Berset recalls the reaction of the wife of the Bishop of Worcester to Darwin’s theory: let us hope it is not true, and if it is true, that it does not become widely known. It did become known. He mentions the bovine tuberculosis that reappeared in […]
Alain Berset starts from a silence: last year, at this same podium, no one had been able to say where Europe was heading. Never since 1914 has the situation there been so open. But politics and the economy, he says, are no longer adversaries: they pursue the same goals. He argues for a comprehensive reform […]
In Montricher, at the foot of the Vaud Jura, Alain Berset evokes the neighbouring Cluniac villages, Romainmôtier first among them, and the monks who introduced notions of social justice. “Without Cluny, no Lavaux: imagine the catastrophe!” Empires pass, he says; towns and villages remain. He ends on federalism: it is for the municipalities to recall […]
On the sidelines of Art Basel, the Federal Office of Culture presents the Swiss Art Awards: 20 works honoured out of 568 entries, and for the first time design included in the ceremony. Thomas Huber is among the winners of the Prix Meret Oppenheim. Alain Berset recalls that the Federal Art Commission counted Böcklin and […]
Before Pro Senectute Lucerne, on the theme “Lebensqualität im Alter – was leistet die Medizin?”, Alain Berset starts from a young woman undergoing one cosmetic operation after another: “Ich will nicht alt werden.” At 65, life expectancy is now 17 years for men and 21 years for women: old age has become a phase of […]
The Dutch researcher Geert Hofstede compared Swiss corporate culture to a “well-oiled machine”. Before the machine industry, Alain Berset links the image to social partnership: the industry’s social partners have just concluded a new collective labour agreement, for the first time with a minimum wage. He meets apprentices there; one asks him whether he will […]
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