A Swiss police officer admonished Dutch nationals who recently moved to Switzerland for responding to his questions in English.
According to Swiss media reports, the motorists were recently stopped for a routine traffic check in the canton of Aargau.
Since these new arrivals understand some German but don’t speak it fluently, they responded to the police officer’s questions in English.
However, the officer reprimanded them, pointing out angrily – in perfect English – that “in Switzerland, people speak German, not English.”
That message was not lost in translation.
After the motorist recounted the incident on social media, Aargau cantonal police have started an internal investigation into the traffic stop.
In the meantime, they said that language barriers are a recurring issue in everyday police work.
“Depending on the situation, it is always necessary to find a reasonable solution to enable communication,” they stated.
READ MORE: Can you get by in Switzerland with just English?
‘Arbitrary arrests’
This is not the first time the Aargau police force made the news: back in 2021, officers routinely targeted foreign motorists passing through the canton – especially those with registration plates from Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
Police had reportedly acted on an order to stop and detain foreigners suspected of being “criminal tourists,”even though no legal basis to do so existed.
Experts who examined the police order in question said it read “like a license for arbitrary arrests.”
It stipulated that “suspicious persons who are not domiciled in Switzerland are to be placed in a police station.”
READ MORE: Swiss police under fire for ‘arbitrarily’ targeting foreigners in canton of Aargau
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Other regions, however, show a more welcoming attitude toward English-speakers.
For instance, less than 50 km away from Aargau, the city of Zurich is far more accommodating toward English-speaking foreigners.
From the end of 2024, public transport company VBZ has been making announcements in English along with German on its trams and buses.
“In Zurich, this makes perfect sense: last year the city had 1.4 million visitors from abroad, many of whom do not understand German,” said Judith Setz, VBZ’s spokesperson.
“In addition, English is the main language for around 13 percent of the city’s 450,000 inhabitants,” she pointed out.
