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The Federal Council used emergency law to save CS. Parliament will comment on this decision in April.
Why are there additional sessions in Parliament at all? Sarah Bütikofer, a political scientist at the University of Zurich, says: “Parliament produces too much work for itself to be able to tackle and reduce this work in the allotted time.” For about 10 years there has been a regular special session in May. The extraordinary session that has now been announced, which will take place in calendar week 15, was convened because more than a quarter of the National Councilors spoke out in favor of it.
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Special sessions are necessary because Parliament has too much work to do. Extraordinary sessions, on the other hand, are reactions to events.
REUTERS/Pascal Lauener
Was it foreseeable that an extraordinary session would take place after this event? It was foreseeable that there would be an extraordinary event, as the SDA news agency writes. Because: SP, FDP, Mitte and Greens spoke out in favor of it at the beginning of the week. Aline Trede (BE), leader of the Greens, demanded that Parliament should get involved in the release of commitment credits of 109 billion francs for federal guarantees by the financial delegation of the councils.
What can we expect from the extraordinary session? Once again it has been shown that the militia system is made for such extraordinary events, says Sarah Bütikofer. “When decisions of high urgency with international impact are pending, the decision-making authority is fully focused on the executive and in the present case also on cooperation with expert committees.” Parliament had no chance to get involved in this deal. “The members of parliament or the parliamentary groups want to change that.”
What is the aim of this? It is unclear what this will lead to, Bütikofer said. “It is also unclear whether decisions made can be different.” The Federal Council had stated that it had chosen the best of all bad solutions with almost no way out. Parliament may judge the situation differently.
What can the parties and Parliament do? The takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS was sealed by emergency law. “The parliamentarians can announce their positions and say what they think of the decisions”. With advances, they can come back to the decisions. The FDP has already announced that it wants to ensure that the federal government creates the conditions for the Swiss core bank of Credit Suisse to continue to operate independently.