Switzerland’s federal housing office (FHO) has cut the reference mortgage rate used to set rents, giving many tenants grounds to demand lower payments. From 2 September 2025 the rate falls by a quarter point to 1.25%, after holding steady in June. It had already dropped from 1.75% to 1.5% in March. The benchmark, published quarterly […]
Swiss government rejects call to double price of the motorway vignette
This week, Switzerland’s government rejected a call to double the price of the motorway vignette, reported RTS. The annual permit, which has cost CHF 40 since 1995, will not rise to CHF 80, as proposed by Martin Candinas, a centrist MP from Graubünden. He had argued that the increase should be coupled with a matching […]
Baidu picks Switzerland to pilot its robotaxis
Robotaxis are common place across much of the US and China. Waymo, a self-driving taxi pioneer, operates in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Austin and Atlanta, with plans to expand further. In China, robotaxi services are widespread across major cities such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing. Progress in Europe has been relatively […]
Swiss Post stops sending parcels to America
This week, Swiss Post announced it would stop accepting parcels bound for America from 26 August 2025. The suspension, which follows similar moves by other European postal operators, stems from new American customs rules requiring every package—regardless of size or value—to be declared and cleared. Letters, documents and express deliveries remain unaffected. The change follows […]
Did Swiss president’s lecturing scupper US tariff negotiations?
Did a phone call with Switzerland’s president provoke Donald Trump into slapping punitive tariffs on the country? According to SonntagsBlick, citing unnamed American sources, Karin Keller-Sutter, Switzerland’s president, so irritated the US president during an exchange on 31 July 2025, that he imposed a 39% tariff on Swiss goods—the highest rate imposed on any developed […]
Swiss pilots under strain due to pilot shortage
Swiss International Air Lines is struggling with a shortage of pilots. The problem is not a lack of recruits—its European Flight Academy in Solothurn is full, with about 100 trainees per intake—but a training backlog caused by the covid-19 pandemic, when courses were halted and only resumed in mid-2022. Passenger demand has since surged, leaving […]
Swiss rents set to rise sharply in coming years
Swiss tenants face steep rent increases in the coming years. According to Martin Tschirren, head of the Federal Housing Office, advertised rents are likely to climb by 3–5% annually. Demand for housing continues to outstrip supply, he told the NZZ am Sonntag on 25 August 2025, as his office released its latest housing market data. […]
Switzerland’s higher state pensions to be financed with VAT increase
In March 2024 Swiss voters approved, by 58%, a plan to grant pensioners a 13th monthly payment. That set off a quarrel over how to fund it. This week the National Council’s social-security committee backed a scheme to finance the extra benefit solely through a 0.7 percentage point rise in value-added tax, reported SRF. The […]
Swiss court drops appeal against Platini and Blatter acquittal
Switzerland’s federal prosecutor will not challenge the acquittal of Michel Platini and Joseph Blatter, the former heads of UEFA and FIFA, reported RTS. The ruling, which cleared them of fraud, breach of trust, mismanagement and forgery, is now final. By accepting the verdicts at both trial and appeal, the prosecutor has closed another chapter of […]
If we give in, Trump will demand more, says Swiss political scientist
Donald Trump’s tariffs threaten to dent Swiss exports. They have also sparked what Joseph de Weck, a Swiss historian and political scientist, calls an identity crisis in a country long used to navigating between great powers. Mr Trump treats trade deficits as the source of almost every American ill—debt, deindustrialisation, even the opioid crisis. Tariffs […]
