Alain Berset presents the Caritas Prize 2012 to José María Romero, a Guatemalan smallholder and founder of the association “Instancia Tierra Norte”. He speaks to him in Spanish. He traces the life of a sharecropper who has fought several times to keep the land he farms and to feed his family, and salutes “un esfuerzo […]
Before the Handelskammer beider Basel, Alain Berset talks about trade, research and art. He recalls that one franc in two is earned through exports, one in three with the EU, and that pharmaceuticals account for more than 60 billion francs of exports. Before this audience close to the pharmaceutical industry, he addresses the price of […]
Two days after the no to managed care, Alain Berset and the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Health Directors launch a master plan in support of family medicine. It takes up the main demands of the popular initiative “Yes to family medicine”, pending in Parliament. Three strands: funds for teaching family medicine at universities, better remuneration […]
On 17 June, the managed care revision is rejected by around three voters in four. Four days later, Alain Berset addresses the Forum Managed Care symposium. “But the reform was clearly rejected by the Swiss people last Sunday.” His reading of the vote: the people did not reject integrated care; they were afraid of seeing […]
At Fribourgissima, Alain Berset talks about the balances that make Switzerland: regional, linguistic, political. Direct democracy makes it “a country of perpetual bargaining, of negotiated, concerted solutions”, and the search for consensus is part of its identity. He links this stability to innovation, and recalls the priority the Federal Council gives to education, research and […]
At the Zermatt Summit, devoted to the common good, Alain Berset delivers a text of political philosophy that opens in Greek: “O bios politikos”. He starts from Arendt: action and speech are the only two truly political activities. His thesis: politics must not give in to technical or economic fatalism. “Politics trumps the expertocracy because […]
Before the Swiss Employers’ Association, Alain Berset opens with the end of the honeymoon: six months after taking office, “der Moment, in dem die Medien nervös zu werden beginnen”. He describes a “heimlicher Konsens”: political stability is Switzerland’s real asset. Then he defends the welfare state head-on before the employers. “Der Sozialstaat hat sich keinesfalls […]
A month after her re-election, Margaret Chan is received in Berne by Alain Berset for a working lunch. She also sees State Secretary Yves Rossier and visits the SDC. On the agenda: the follow-up to the World Health Assembly, non-communicable diseases, research into medicines for diseases of developing countries, and WHO reform. Switzerland then sits […]
For his first 1 August as a Federal Councillor, Alain Berset speaks in the three main language regions: on the evening of 31 July in Middes, in his own canton, at midday on 1 August in Altdorf, and in the evening in Locarno. The same speech, in three languages: “Un pays à la fois solide […]
On the evening of 1 August, Alain Berset opens the 65th Locarno Film Festival in the cloister of the Scuola Magistrale, in French and Italian. He quotes Hermann Hesse on Ticino and makes Locarno, in August, “la vera capitale culturale della Svizzera”. On 3 August, at a press conference with Jean-Frédéric Jauslin, Director of the […]
With Isabelle Chassot, President of the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education, Alain Berset launches the campaign for the federal decree on the promotion of music education for young people. The text, a counter-proposal to the “youth + music” initiative, which has been withdrawn, anchors music in the Constitution. It provides for national objectives […]
Alain Berset opens the Swiss Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale, devoted to the architect Miroslav Šik and his exhibition “And Now the Ensemble!!!”. He also visits other pavilions with Pro Helvetia. On the sidelines, he meets the French Minister of Culture, Aurélie Filippetti. The two ministers agree to intensify Franco-Swiss cultural cooperation and discuss copyright […]
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