- The Federal Council has adopted the message on the international cooperation strategy 2025–28 (IZA strategy).
- Parliament can decide on the goals and priorities of international cooperation in the coming years.
- The Federal Council is requesting a total of 11.27 billion francs for support abroad.
As part of the international cooperation strategy 2025 to 2028, 1.5 billion francs are earmarked for Ukraine. This money is to be used for humanitarian aid, development cooperation, reconstruction as well as peace, democracy and human rights.
The amount requested for Ukraine corresponds to 13 percent of the total requested loan commitments of 11.27 billion francs. The remaining 87 percent, 9.77 billion francs, will be allocated primarily to the key regions of Africa, the Near and Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe.
3.25 billion are earmarked for bilateral development cooperation, as Cassis explained. The Federal Council has increased the share for humanitarian aid to 2.21 billion francs. He wants to budget 2.39 billion francs for multilateral cooperation, 1.36 billion for thematic global programs and 0.57 billion for Swiss NGOs.
The Federal Council wants to spend about the same amount of money on development cooperation as it has in the last four years. “Wars and crises make the world more unstable and affect the borders under the three pillars,” said Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis at the media conference in Bern.
The Federal Council wants to be able to react flexibly to crises. It is increasingly important to deal with the consequences of ongoing crises. This comes at the expense of development aid, said Cassis. Ideally, recipient states should be strengthened to such an extent that they will no longer be dependent on development aid. “Unfortunately we are a long way from that.”
The Federal Council has integrated aid to Ukraine into its international cooperation strategy. It did so despite demands from the consultation that this aid should not come at the expense of support for other countries.
One criterion for this help is local needs, said Cassis. The second is the interests of Switzerland. “Ukraine is geographically close to us and affects us through security policy aspects.” The third criterion is added value: Switzerland has been active in Ukraine for thirty years and has built trusting relationships there.
It is also said that the IZA funds must be considered within the context of the entire federal budget. The Federal Council therefore decided not to increase the amounts of the commitment loans and to stick to the current financial plan.
Criticism for this attitude comes from the development policy working group Alliance Sud: An extraordinary situation like the war in Ukraine requires extraordinary resources, she wrote. It is not acceptable to let the people in the Global South foot the bill for aid in Ukraine.
Lower amount than planned in June 2023
In June 2023, the Federal Council proposed commitment loans of 11.45 billion francs for the consultation. The fact that he is now applying for a little less is due to a recommendation from the ICRC to cancel the “Capital for the ICRC Foundation” loan because the project to recapitalize it is being interrupted. The Federal Council also corrected inflation.