Ruth Dreifuss criticizes the Federal Council’s “silence”
Keystone-SDA
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Former Swiss government minister Ruth Dreifuss says the current government has shown a lack of leadership on the issue of relations with the European Union.
“At the time of the Bilaterals I and II, there was strong leadership from the Federal Council to push them through,” she told the newspaper Le Temps.
She no longer has this impression today, saying the government is not fulfilling its role on the European issue. She went on to say that she “deeply regretted” this development. Dreifuss was head of the Federal Department of Home Affairs from 1993 to 2002.
Minutes of Federal Council meetings from 1994, which were published on January 1, 2025, show a hesitant attitude on the part of the executive after the “no” to the European Economic Area at the end of 1992, as Le Temps wrote.
Ruth Dreifuss, a member of the Federal Council at the time, spoke of a “time of particularly strong tensions”. The government was unsure which priorities should be set in relations with Brussels and which issues should be settled immediately or left for later negotiations.
As an example, Dreifuss cited Switzerland’s participation in the European research program, which had been a “high priority” for her.
‘Deafening silence’
Today, she is convinced that the reasons for a rapprochement with Europe are similar to those in 1994 – perhaps even more urgent. However, the resistance remained largely the same.
Dreifuss criticised the “deafening silence of the Federal Council” when Ambassador Roberto Balzaretti tried to explain the results of the negotiations with Brussels to the public in May 2021. The explanation of the breakdown in negotiations was also accompanied by a conspicuous silence. “Since then, I haven’t heard much more from the Federal Council,” Dreifuss concluded.
More
More
The rocky relationship between Switzerland and the European Union
This content was published on
The Swiss president, Viola Amherd, would like to seal a deal by the end of the year to update relations with the European Union.
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
More
Credit Suisse Nazi ties ‘ran deeper than thought’: media report
This content was published on
Credit Suisse is alleged to have withheld details of its historic links with World War II-era Nazi clients, says the Wall Street Journal.
