Berne
Manuscrit, non publié à l’époque. Seul le prononcé fait foi. Les notes de travail ont été retirées.
Discours prononcé en anglais et en français. Texte original, non traduit.
Mesdames et Messieurs,
Thank you very much for your kind invitation.
Il faut le dire : vous avez mérité un bon repas. Il y a clairement des missions plus simples que de parler de la Suisse à un public étranger. Surtout qu’il faut commencer par expliquer diplomatiquement à sa rédaction que non, en Suisse, il n’y a définitivement pas de renne. Ni de Viking d’ailleurs.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Oscar Wilde mocked the Swiss by saying that “cattle have more expression”.
And the BBC, while recently naming Zurich as one of the world’s leading cities in terms of quality of life, also stated that it was ‘boring’!
And how about Geneva with its international reputation? Here too the harsh verdict was: ‘deadly dull’!
Our political system is also a bit much for foreign correspondents to take. A president, who can’t take decisions on his own – and who only holds office for a year? Ok, to some of you that might actually sound like a really good idea… But how are you supposed to make a story out of it?
I can imagine that just trying to explain the difference between the Cash Cow Initiative and the Horned Cow Initiative must be a bit awkward. Yes, we vote on pretty much everything: on pre-implantation diagnostics and unconditional basic income; on banning animal experimentation and second homes.
We have already set the dates for the next 64 votes and elections up until 2034.
I’m not sure whether you can even get that across to your readers at home. Apparently there are countries where JUST ONE referendum is enough to plunge the country into years of uncertainty and confusion… Fortunately, we in Switzerland have already sorted out our relationship with the EU…
Ladies and gentlemen,
Of course, you know Switzerland better than that. You’re well aware that we work very hard to be that boring! Boredom is a civilising act!
This kind of insult is music to our ears. Boring can be good. Stability is boring, but stability is GOOD. Continuity may be boring, but GOOD. Reliability is GOOD.
And I wish the same for your Association: stability, continuity and reliability!
That just leaves the matter of the key question for foreign correspondents. It was posed by a foreigner – the Austrian writer Alexander Roda Roda, who said: “It is good fortune to be born Swiss. It is also nice to die Swiss. But what do you in between?”
I’m afraid I don’t have the answer, but the Federal Council has set up a working group. It will present its interim report in five years’ time…
That’s one thing you can learn in Switzerland: patience. Perhaps an exercise in patience would be useful for the media:
The speed with which news spreads today shouldn’t make us nervous.
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung saw the risks of online journalism very early on. And I mean very early: on the front page of its first edition in 1780 it wrote: “We will not be able to report on world events before they happen.”
On that note, I look forward to having some unhurried and interesting discussions.