The impression remains that you can no longer see the crisis for all the organizational charts, organizations and crisis teams.
As soon as some posters are taken down, new ones are set up: Federal Bern in crisis mode.
A plague, a war, impending energy shortages – the world, and with it Switzerland, has been in crisis mode for more than two years. There is no end in sight to this cascade. And in Bundesbern one asks oneself: How quickly does politics have to learn from the last crisis in order to be able to keep up with new crises that have already started?
The Federal Council, parliament and administration were hoping for a breather between dealing with the pandemic and preparing for possible gas and electricity shortages. However, the war in Ukraine thwarted an in-depth debriefing.
wrangling of the staffs
What remains from the Corona period is the collective trauma of not being able to deal with a global and elusive crisis as well as one was used to with regional events, a landslide or a flood.
And the same question remains that has accompanied Switzerland since the beginning of 2020: Who is responsible for what in this country with its cantons and municipalities and its constantly expanding administration? The impression remains that you can no longer see the crisis for all the organizational charts, organizations and (crisis) teams.
A report by the Parliamentary Control Committee (GPK) shows how quickly the Federal Council can lose track. The supervisory authority showed that at the beginning of the Corona crisis, the Covid 19 task force of the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) had become independent.
The body – not to be confused with the scientific Corona Task Force – was subordinate to the then BAG director Pascal Strupler and was set up and expanded in parallel to the course of the crisis, with hundreds of employees, but without a specific legal basis. The bodies actually responsible, such as the Federal Civil Protection Staff (BSTB) and the Corona Crisis Staff of the Federal Council (KSBC), were pushed to the brink of insignificance.
According to the GPK, the wrangling of the staff was also one of the reasons for the sometimes confused corona policy of the interior department, in which practically all decision-making power was concentrated. And if the responsibilities between the departments and offices are not clear, it becomes all the more difficult between the federal government and the cantons.
On Monday, the National Council approved a motion by the GPK, which is intended to prevent such a false start in future crises. The Federal Council should adapt the existing legal basis for crisis management and determine which departments and which federal offices are responsible for which crisis.
The GPK also calls on the government to draw up a “critical overall assessment of its crisis organization”. The Federal Council should examine whether the existing requirements need to be adjusted with regard to a possible energy or nuclear war crisis. Here the National Council followed the commission practically unanimously.
With a special voice, the Federal Council let the GPK and the National Council know what it thought of their demands. It was Chancellor Walter Thurnherr who represented the government’s negative attitude towards the initiatives. “It is now well known what went well, and above all we also know what went less well,” said Thurnherr in the plenary session.
Actions instead of reports
The message from the Federal Council’s chief of staff could also be understood as an appeal to politicians in general and to the Federal Council in particular: Instead of constantly writing new reports, one should start implementing the recommendations from the previous Corona review as soon as possible. In March 2023, the Federal Council itself intends to present a “debate paper” with different variants for the organization of the federal administration’s crisis management.
Until then, the government must deal with the energy shortage, a crisis that already sounds familiar: the back and forth between the responsible energy department of Federal Councilor Simonetta Sommaruga and that of Economics Minister Guy Parmelin, the instruction of the population through a prevention campaign , the interventions in the economy and up to the private room temperature. And the cantons are also reporting back. With regard to the energy crisis, the conference of cantonal governments “urgently” calls for the establishment of a cross-departmental crisis management team. The crisis marmot greets you every day.