Financial aid to UN employees in Geneva is under threat of a referendum
As UN organisations and NGOs in Geneva are seriously affected by the drying up of funding from the United States, cantonal authorities have voted in favour of earmarking 10 million francs to allow employees whose jobs became redundant after the US withdrawal to nevertheless receive a salary for three months.
However, the Geneva branch of the populist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and a staunch opponent of Switzerland’s involvement in the UN, has said it will launch a referendum against this publicly-funded financial aid.
In order for the referendum to take place, the SVP must collect 4,214 valid signatures by April 2nd.
Some communities impose exorbitant parking fees
If you don’t have private parking, you probably have to rely on municipally-owned spaces on your street —and that can be quite expensive.
Depending on where you live, your annual parking fee could cost up to 1,000 francs, according to Adi Kolecic, mobility expert at Comparis consumer platform, which has carried out an analysis of the fees charged for resident parking permits in 40 Swiss cities
His comparison of various communities reveals the enormous disparity of parking card prices among various communities.
For instance, the cheapest one — 20 francs a year — can be had in La Chaux-de-Fonds (Neuchâtel). It is 48 times cheaper than the most expensive parking fee (960 francs) that motorists in Wetzikon (Zurich) have to pay.
“As in many other areas, Switzerland is a patchwork when it comes to parking permits. This is reflected in the immensely different tariffs as well as the different guidelines for issuing resident parking permits,” Kolecic said.
Comparis has also discovered a pattern of sorts.
“The cheapest long-term parking cards are often available in cities with high taxes – so they tend to be in western Switzerland,” Kolecic said.
And, “left-green dominated cities, which are known to pursue climate-friendly policies, are often surprisingly cheap as well,” he pointed out.
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Zurich cyclists may soon have to pay traffic taxes
The Zurich cantonal parliament has provisionally supported a motion submitted by a resident, asking that cyclists pay a traffic tax.
The idea behind this proposal is that car and motorcycle owners contribute to the maintenance of road infrastructure through the motor vehicle tax and motorway vignettes, while cyclists use the roads without making any financial contribution.
The proposal is therefore calling for a cost-covering traffic tax for cyclists.
Similar considerations are already being made at the federal level: the Federal Roads Office is currently conducting a study on the ‘polluter-pays’ funding of bicycle infrastructure.
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English is becoming increasingly more prevalent in Switzerland
The proportion of people with a non-national main language has grown significantly in recent years in Switzerland, a new study by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) indicates.
Among them, English is particularly prominent. In 2010 for instance, 4 percent of the permanent resident population had it as their main language, compared to 6 percent in 2023.
Half of the people whose main language is English are part of the first-generation foreign population.
English is also an important language in professional settings, since 23 percent of the employed population speaks it regularly at work.
This proportion is almost as high as for one the national languages —French (28 percent) — and is far ahead of Italian (8 percent).
READ ALSO: Where in Switzerland is English most widely used?
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