A ranking published this week placed Switzerland 22nd in a ranking of 49 European nations on gay rights by ILGA-Europe. Malta (94%) was ranked number 1 while Azerbaijan (2%) was ranked at the bottom in 49th position. Switzerland was calculated to be only 39% of the way towards a perfect score, according to ILGA-Europe. Scores […]
Convictions down 11% in Switzerland in 2020
Convictions of adults declined by 11% in 2020 in Switzerland, according to figures released by Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office. This is the steepest decline in many years. In 2020 around 95 000 adult convictions were registered in the conviction register. This corresponds to a drop of 11% compared with the 2019 year. The greatest decline […]
Sharp drop in hours worked in Switzerland in 2020
The total number of hours worked in Switzerland in 2020 dropped by nearly 4% compared to 2019, announced the Federal Statistical Office this week. In a year marked by the Covid-19 pandemic total hours worked in Switzerland dropped by nearly 300 million or 3.7% compared to the previous year. In 2019, 7.9 billion hours of […]
Switzerland: great quality of life at considerable cost
A recent survey of expats presents Switzerland as a double edged sword. The survey, which covers 59 nations, ranks Switzerland near the top on quality of life but near the bottom on cost. In the ranking by InterNations, Switzerland is listed 30 out of 59 countries overall for its attractiveness to expats. However, its score […]
Nearly 1 in 3 children suffer violence in Switzerland
Nearly a third of children and adolescents in Switzerland suffer physical violence at school, according to a study by the NGO UNICEF. In addition, 29% of children surveyed reported experiencing physical violence at home. Between November 2019 and June 2020, 1715 children and adolescents between 9 and 17 were surveyed across Switzerland and Liechtenstein about […]
Switzerland qualifies for Eurovision final
Swiss singer Gjon Muharremaj, known professionally as Gjon’s Tears, has made it through to the final of the 2021 Eurovision song contest. 22 year-old Muharremaj lives in Broc in the canton of Fribourg. His father is Kosovo Albanian and his mother Albanian. Broc is a small town in French-speaking Switzerland not far from the town […]
Nearly two thirds of Swiss support EU framework agreement, suggests poll
Switzerland and the EU have been working at failing to agree on a new agreement on Switzerland’s relationship with the EU for sometime now. One point of negotiating leverage used by Switzerland is that Swiss voters would reject the deal proposed by the EU in a referendum. However, a recent poll suggests that might not […]
Organic farming continues to gain ground in Switzerland
Switzerland continues to shift towards organic farming. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of organic farms has risen by 54%. In 2020, the number rose 3.8%. Organic farms now make up 15.3% of total farms in Switzerland, up from 6.9% 20 years ago. In 2000, there were 4,902 organic farms. By 2020, the number had […]
40,000 hotel and restaurant jobs lost in Switzerland in 2020
Recent data show that Swiss hotels and restaurants shed 40,000 jobs in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, with restaurants reliant on business travel hit the hardest, according to RTS. These figures do not include the effects of the pandemic beyond the end of 2020 and therefore exclude the impact of the pandemic […]
Latest poll shows majority support for Swiss anti-pesticide votes
With five weeks to go before Swiss vote on two initiatives aimed at drastically cutting the use of pesticides, more than 50% appear to be in favour of both initiatives, according to RTS. One of these initiatives, the clean drinking water initiative, aims to tie access to Switzerland’s generous farm subsidies to forgoing pesticide (and […]
