Category: Switzerland

After an unusually mild spell, winter is set to return to Switzerland this weekend. Temperatures are expected to drop sharply—by about 10°C—between Friday night and Saturday, according to MétéoSuisse. Snow is also forecast to return, although the snowline and expected amounts remain uncertain.

Spring had seemed to arrive early this year, with trees budding and daffodils already in bloom. But by Saturday afternoon temperatures in the lowlands may reach only 7–8°C. That would mark a sharp contrast with recent conditions, when several local records for late February were broken. On February 27th temperatures reached 20°C in Fahy and 17.6°C in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

Snow possible
Snowfall is also possible. Although forecasts remain uncertain, snowflakes could fall at around 600–700 metres, with 10–15cm of fresh snow above roughly 1,000 metres.

MétéoSuisse notes that such a cold snap is not unusual for mid-March and would simply bring temperatures closer to seasonal norms. The return of winter is also expected to be brief: sunshine and milder conditions, with temperatures of around 12°C, are forecast for next week.

A warm February globally
Globally, February 2026 was the fifth-warmest February on record. Average global temperatures reached 13.3°C, about 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (1850–1900).

Europe’s picture was more mixed. The continent experienced one of its colder Februaries of the past 14 years overall, with particularly low temperatures in Scandinavia, Finland, the Baltic states and north-western Russia. By contrast, western and southern Europe were unusually mild.

In Switzerland, the warmth was especially noticeable at lower altitudes. In Neuchâtel and Payerne February 2026 ranked as the third-mildest February since records began, tied with 1990 and behind 2024 and 2020. The same ranking was recorded in Sion.

Several heat records for February were broken. On February 27th temperatures reached 20°C in Fahy, 17.6°C in La Chaux-de-Fonds and 16.3°C in La Brévine—all new records for the month. Temperatures also climbed well above seasonal norms elsewhere, reaching around 18°C in Zurich, about 17°C in Basel and roughly 16°C in Bern during the late-February warm spell.

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Why is this transit tax being introduced?

The aim of this measure is to reduce peak traffic on the national road network with a traffic-dependent transit fee.

According to MP Marco Chiesa from the Swiss People’s Party, who instigated this move in the Parliament, “our national roads, especially the major Alpine routes, are congested with transit traffic that brings no benefit to our country. It is unacceptable that Switzerland continues to suffer the consequences of this parasitic traffic.” 

Government figures confirm that  in 2024 – the last year for which these statistics exist – over 55,000 hours of traffic jams were recorded on national motorways. The situation has not improved for years, especially the bottlenecks at the Gotthard Tunnel, which connects Switzerland with Italy and is therefore frequently used by south-bound tourists.

Another supporter of this measure, MP Stefan Engler from the Centre Party, added that “the protection of our population takes precedence over the desire to reach the Mediterranean beaches as quickly as possible.”

As for another Centre MP, Simon Stadler, who represents Uri, the canton situated at the northern end of the Gotthard tunnel, “we have practically an overload every weekend from spring to autumn,” he said. “On days when the mountain regions are congested, around 80 percent of the vehicles have foreign license plates.

Therefore, the amount to be paid would vary depending on traffic density, time of day, and day of the week.

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‘Administrative burden’

Not everyone is on board with the new measure, however.

The Federal Council, the Green Liberals, as well as Liberal-Radicals have opposed the motion all along.

Green Liberal deputy Barbara Schaffner has pointed out that even if such a tax could be designed to comply with international law, it is unconstitutional, because the Constitution provides for toll-free use of motorways, with the exception of the vignette.

Furthermore, the measure would create an administrative burden, the opponents argued.

That’s because all border crossings would have to be closely monitored, even though they are equipped with cameras.

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How will this work?

The idea behind te measure is relatively simple: to tax foreign vehicles which use Switzerland’s roads merely as an entry and exit point,  to get from one country to another, 

But the ‘instruction manual’ on how this will actually function in real life still has many empty pages in it.

That’s because many questions remain unanswered,

For instance, the motion specifically targets motorists who do not make a “substantial” stop in Switzerland.

According to Transport Minister Albert Rösti, whose department would have to shoulder the implementation of the new law, the definition of what constitutes ‘transit’ and what constitutes a ‘stay’ would have to be clearly defined.

If you stop for lunch on your way from France to Italy, will this count as transit or stop? If an overnight stay is required, how many nights must you spend in Switzerland to forego the fee?

“The question of what constitutes a substantial stay will likely be difficult to answer definitively for all conceivable transit routes,” Rösti conceded.

It also remains unclear how the registration of border crossings will technically work, and how the amounts of tax will be set and collected.

Additionally – and this is an important point – how will the European Union react to such a tax, even if it does not contravene existing or pending agreements between Bern and Brussels? 

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What’s next?

As with any new motion accepted by both chambers of the Parliament (the National Council and the Council of States), it will now be up to to the Federal Council to draft a bill to this effect. How long this process will take will depend of how quickly – or not – all the points are clearly defined.

Last but not least, it is not known yet whether this issue will need to be voted on in a referendum before being introduced.

 

The executive council of canton Bern is prepared to explicitly mention feminicide in its crime statistics. However, it does not wish to go it alone, preferring to wait until a national definition and criteria have been established for recording these acts of violence.

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The motion put forward by Green Party parliamentarian Manuel C. Widmer calls on the government to include feminicides in the annual crime statistics for the canton of Bern, separately and as such. At present, there is no official institution that systematically documents this type of crime in Switzerland.

The authors of the motion point out that feminicide reflects violence rooted in patriarchal power structures in society. They believe that violence inflicted on women is often regarded as a private matter. “In Switzerland, the term ‘feminicide’ is still not firmly anchored in political discourse”.

Uniform standards

In its recently published response to the motion, the government supports in principle the creation of a separate category in the annual crime statistics. But it stresses that it would be inappropriate to limit the figures to the canton of Bern alone.

Bern’s executive council considers it necessary to make a comparison at national level and to agree on a single definition and uniform factors for analysing the data. It therefore refers to the postulate “Feasibility study for keeping statistics on feminicides” submitted by parliament to the Federal Council.

In the view of the Bernese cantonal government, feminicides could be included in the crime statistics of each canton on the basis of a uniform definition and criteria.

Translated from French by AI/ds

During an oppressively hot week in Paris in 1878, the bohemian Belgian artist Félicien Rops painted a picture of a woman walking her pet pig. In it, the woman is blindfolded and naked – bar some stockings, long black gloves and a jaunty feathered hat – and the pig has a cute, pink curlicue of a tail. Pornocrates – which roughly translates as “the ruler of fornication” – is an eye worm. Once seen, it’s hard to forget.

Rops recalled composing his most famous work “in an overheated apartment, full of different smells, where the opopanax and cyclamen gave me a slight fever conducive towards production or even towards reproduction”. As viewers of Laboratory of Lust, a new exhibition on Rops at Kunsthaus Zurich, will discover to their amazement, or perhaps indignation, mating and painting were indelibly linked in Rops’ psyche.

In the late 19th century, Rops created a vast oeuvre of drawings, etchings, prints and paintings of such breathtaking fruitiness – often laced with satanic elements – that even Picasso responded to him in awe (in homage, the Spaniard drew a cartoon of a man in the form of a pig performing cunnilingus on a woman). Rops’ works depicted naked witches riding brooms, voyeurs in top hats and courtesans riding penis-shaped bicycles. The French art critic Félix Fénéon called him an artist “who paints phalluses the way others paint landscapes”.

“Even today’s viewers are sometimes left breathless – whether at the sight of a naked woman tied to a cross, a risque Parisian woman walking her pig, or an Eve being ensnared by a phallic snake,” notes Ann Demeester, director of Kunsthaus Zurich. Rops would have loved such gasping. Writing about his most shocking images, he noted: “I sometimes do things like this to bring my backside up to the level of your faces.”

Rops was born in Namur in central Belgium in 1833. The son of a wealthy industrialist, he was an unlikely future decadent. He studied law and married the daughter of a magistrate, who owned a local castle. He might have settled into the life of a country squire but art, Paris and philandering beckoned. With a razor-sharp goatee and brooding brow, Rops had the looks of a young Ethan Hawke. He perfected a kind of shabby-garret style of dress.

His illustrative work, for authors such as Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine, shifted from realist subjects to his infamous fantastical pictures of the women of the demimonde – who he called Ropsiennes. He saw modern women as femme fatales, but it was the bourgeois men undone by temptation that were his real target.

His own love life matched his art. Having abandoned his wife and son, he lived for three decades in a menage à trois with the sisters Léontine and Aurélie Duluc, and fathered children with both. He navigated the outrage of the more moralistic elements of belle epoque society, and his unconventional domestic situation underpinned an extraordinarily successful career: by the mid-1870s he was the most highly paid illustrator in Paris. He died, aged 65, in 1898, the same year that he received the Légion d’honneur. In his later years, he grew roses.

There is a small, dedicated group of collectors for works by Rops, says Claude Piening, specialist in 19th-century European pictures at Sotheby’s. “His watercolours and his oil paintings don’t come up often because many are spoken for by museums and collectors. What does come up is his printed work and if you’re a bibliophile you’ll see his work in frontispieces.” A rare and candid watercolour, Le Calvaire (Les Sataniques), in which a woman is strangled by her own hair while wedged under the genitals of a crucified Satan, sold at Sotheby’s in 2007 for about £160,000. The auction catalogue observed: “Satan’s testicles sitting atop the woman’s face like a beret are more comical than frightening.”

There are no issues in offering Rops’ work at international auctions. “There’s erotica or pornography, but that shouldn’t be conflated with art. It’s two different things,” says Piening. “His subjects are quite risque, yes, or, for want of a better word, original. Now, as they were then. And, yes, he might have been out to shock, but at the same time he’s doing this as a self-respecting artist.”

The Zurich exhibition has been orchestrated by Jonas Beyer from the Kunsthaus Zurich and Daan van Heesch, curator for prints and drawings at the Royal Library of Belgium (which has loaned pictures from its 2,000-strong collection of works by the artist). On view will be secret albums that were destined to be viewed in a “male collector’s cabinet”, including frontispieces to pornographic novels and standalone drawings of sex workers.

How difficult is it to stage Laboratory of Lust in an age of conflicting conversations about sex, of #MeToo and OnlyFans? “That’s a central question,” acknowledges Beyer. “I think in Zurich it will be a task to show such explicit works. It’s very traditional.” Phalluses perhaps don’t sit easily with high-end chocolate and luxury watches. “It’s worth the risk because we’re in times when you have to discuss sexuality. If you look at the Epstein files, I think you have to talk about how male culture perceives women.”

The curators aim to present Rops in the round. “He was one of the most accomplished and successful symbolist artists of his time, working together with all the famous authors,” says Van Heesch. “But at the same time his art is so disturbing, violent and shocking, and fascinating as well. I think we want to look him in the eye and read him a bit against the grain, without cancelling him.”

The Federal Council has sent a package of agreements with the European Union to parliament, allowing lawmakers to begin debating a plan aimed at stabilising and developing Switzerland’s relations with the bloc.

Presenting the proposal in Bern, Guy Parmelin, the president of the confederation, said the package was in Switzerland’s interest. Strengthening the bilateral approach, he argued, was the only way to preserve a balanced degree of political autonomy while maintaining close ties with the EU in economic, scientific and social fields.

The government says a stable legal framework is essential. Without updating existing agreements, it argues, the bilateral relationship would gradually lose substance. The package is intended to safeguard Swiss interests in areas including the free movement of people, land transport, electricity and food safety.

Economic benefits
A more reliable framework would support Switzerland’s export-oriented economy, Mr Parmelin said. For instance, about 73% of Swiss exports to the EU would fall under the agreement on the mutual recognition of conformity assessments, which reduces technical barriers to trade.
Immigration under the free-movement regime would remain linked to labour-market needs. Switzerland has also negotiated a new safeguard clause that it could activate independently if inflows become excessive.

Beat Jans, the justice minister, sought to address concerns about social immigration. People entering Switzerland without a job contract, he said, would have to demonstrate that they have sufficient financial means.

Research and wage protection
The package also updates rules on wage protection, one of the last contentious issues in negotiations. An agreement associating Switzerland with EU programmes is already being applied provisionally, allowing Swiss researchers to participate in initiatives such as Horizon Europe. Mr Parmelin described the arrangement as essential for Switzerland’s position as an innovation hub.

The government stressed that the agreements would not limit Switzerland’s system of direct democracy. Citizens would still be able to launch initiatives or referendums against new developments in EU-related law.

Two-part package
The proposal is divided into two parts. The first aims to stabilise and update existing agreements covering air and land transport, trade in food products, the mutual recognition of conformity assessments and the free movement of people.

The second focuses on expanding cooperation, including new agreements on electricity and food safety as well as a health-cooperation accord. Switzerland and the EU also plan to establish a high-level political dialogue and stronger parliamentary cooperation.

Legal changes
Implementing the package would require three new federal laws—covering state-aid supervision, administrative cooperation on professional qualifications and Switzerland’s contributions to European cohesion—as well as 36 amendments to existing legislation.

The agreements also set out a mechanism for dynamically updating relevant EU law in areas covered by the treaties. But, said Ignazio Cassis, the foreign minister, dynamic does not mean automatic: Switzerland would assess each new EU act before deciding whether to adopt it.

A dispute-settlement procedure is also envisaged. If disagreements cannot be resolved within a joint committee, they would be referred to an arbitration tribunal whose rulings would be legally binding. On questions involving the interpretation of EU law, the tribunal would consult the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Parliament is free to amend the legislative changes linked to the package. Six of the seven members of the Federal Council are expected to take part in the parliamentary debates.

The upcoming parliamentary discussion will bring Switzerland one step closer to a refreshed deal with the EU.

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The ongoing war in the Middle East and prospect of a prolonged regional conflict has caused several European airlines to cancel flights, with industry insiders warning of months of knock-on effects, potential travel disruption and accompanying price rises already hitting travellers’ pockets.

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) has announced the cancellation of 1,000 flights in April alone and many other major European airlines have announced cancellations or route cutbacks.

Since Israel and the US began its attacks on Iran in February, many carriers are also avoiding airspace in the region so delays, diversions and disrupted travel are also possible across the Middle East.

Why are airlines cancelling flights?

In a sentence: increased costs caused by rising fuel prices.

With maritime trade slowed in the Strait of Hormuz, Brent crude has spiked and hovered as high as $120 per barrel. News wire Reuters reports that jet fuel costs have doubled in Europe and increased by over 70 percent in Asia.

Speaking to The Independent, SAS spokeswoman Alexandra Lindgren Kaoukji stated that “the sharp increase in fuel costs is affecting the entire European aviation system, and we have therefore, as earlier communicated, also made certain price adjustments linked to the current fuel situation. 

“The level varies depending on the route, but the principle is the same as for other European airlines facing the same conditions.

“The decision to make these short‑term adjustments is about acting early in response to a global cost shock that is affecting the entire industry,” she added.

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Which routes are being cancelled or affected?

Flights travelling to the Middle East or crossing airspace in the Middle East have been impacted the most.

Many airlines have suspended flights to the wider region, notably any flights to Israeli destinations, as well as popular tourist locations such as Dubai and Doha.

Which airlines are cancelling?

Several European airlines have cancelled flights in response to the war and rising fuel prices.

SAS has cancelled 1000 flights in April alone, citing increased fuel costs and a sector shock, though the majority of cancelled flights in March have so far been domestic routes in Norway with a small number to Sweden and Denmark, according to a SAS statement sent to AFP.

READ ALSO: Scandinavian airline SAS to cancel ‘at least a thousand’ flights after fuel prices surge

Air France services to Beirut and Tel Aviv are suspended until March ​21st and to Dubai and Riyadh until March 20th.

Norwegian Air has cancelled its Dubai flights for the winter season and delayed new route launches in the region.

Spanish airline Air Europa has cancelled flights to Tel Aviv until 10th April.

British Airways flights to Dubai, Doha, Bahrain, Amman, Tel Aviv are suspended, many until the summer season.

Italian airline ITA Airways has cancelled all flights to Dubai until 28th March and suspended Tel Aviv services until 9th April.

The Dutch carrier KLM has cancelled all Tel Aviv flights for the rest of the winter season and those to Riyadh, Dammam and Dubai until 28th March.

Lufthansa Group (including Lufthansa, Swiss, Brussels and Austrian Airlines) has cancelled routes to Dubai until 28th March and Tel Aviv 9th April.

Hungarian budget airline Wizz Air has cancelled flights to Israel until 29th March and services to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Amman and Jeddah until mid-September.

Greece’s largest airline, Aegean, has also cancelled services to Beirut, Tel Aviv and Amman until ​April 22nd, and Erbil and Baghdad until May 24th. Its Dubai services are suspended until April 19 and Riyadh until April 18.

Finnair has cancelled its Dubai flights until March 29th and Doha flights until ​July 2nd and is diverting routes to avoid airspace in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Israel.

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How long will it go on for?

It’s unclear. With the unpredictability of geopolitics at the moment, it’s almost impossible to say.

What seems plausible is that the conflict could go on for some time, meaning fuel prices rises – and with it, further travel disruption and ticket prices hikes – could continue for the foreseeable future.

“The longer it goes on, the bleaker it will look,” Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary told Reuters this week.

While downplaying more immediate shocks, O’Leary has also stated recently that if fuel price rises “drag on for six months” it could become a major problem for airlines.

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Will prices go up?

It’s likely. With increased costs, many airlines will pass that onto passengers.

Similarly, with reduced services across the aviation sector some carriers may try to take advantage of the slew of cancellations and capitalise by increasing their prices.

Airline executives have admitted as much. SAS’s Lindgren Kaoukji told The Independent that as a knock-on consequence of the conflict and fuel price rises, “an average SAS flight will cost 500 SEK more (£40.30), while a transatlantic flight will be approximately 2,700 SEK (£218) more expensive.”

Air France-KLM has stated that it has already hiked its long-haul ticket prices due to fuel prices.

READ ALSO: Air France-KLM hikes long-haul ticket prices

On Tuesday March 31, the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Fondation Pacifique are organising an evening dedicated to the Arctic 2020-2024 expedition. The aim of this circumnavigation of the Arctic Ocean by sailboat was to collect scientific data to gain a better understanding of the role of this region, which is particularly sensitive to climate change.

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The documentary “Arctic Horizons. The story of an unprecedented Swiss expedition” will be shown for the first time. The screening will be followed by a discussion on the scientific, environmental and geopolitical challenges of the Arctic, in the presence of Daniel McGinnis, associate professor at the UNIGE and a specialist in environmental and water sciences.

Launched in 2020, the main scientific objective of the expedition was to continuously monitor greenhouse gas concentrations in the Arctic. The project was part of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development (2021-2030).

Fondation Pacifique, a non-profit organisation based in Geneva, welcomes young people from disadvantaged backgrounds aboard its sailing boats. For the 2020-2024 Arctic expedition, two sailing boats were used by the various crews: the Mauritius and the Que Sera.

Adapted from French by AI/ds