SVP and FDP have prevailed in the division of departments. In doing so, they also assume responsibility for adhering to the principle of collegiality.
Get what they wanted: future Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter and Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis at the media conference after the division of departments.
Much is rumored in Bern. Actually, it is almost only rumoured. The rumor that was most widely circulated up to the division of departments went like this: The four Federal Council members of the FDP and the SVP had already met on Wednesday after the Federal Council election to prepare the allocation of offices. Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis is on the verge of a breakthrough in the negotiations with the EU and has therefore pushed for a decision to be taken as quickly as possible. Now that he can finally point to successes, he wants to remain head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (EDA).
Now the rumor has been confirmed. Aim of the action: Four wins. Karin Keller-Sutter (FDP) is moving from the Federal Department of Justice and Police to the Finance Department previously led by Ueli Maurer (SVP). The energy politician Albert Rösti (SVP) takes over Simonetta Sommaruga’s (SP) Department for the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communication (UVEK). Economy Minister Guy Parmelin (SVP) and Ignazio Cassis (FDP) remain where they are. In this scenario, the four bourgeois occupy their desired departments: the foreign, finance, economics and energy ministries. Nothing will change for the Mitte party because Viola Amherd remains and wanted to remain Minister of Defense.
The SP, on the other hand, is downgraded, namely Alain Berset. Because the interior minister would obviously have liked to change his department. He knows that he can no longer achieve much in EDI. At the same time he would have taken the pressure off himself with a castling. After a change, the expectation that he would no longer stand in the general elections in 2023 and make room for a comrade from German-speaking Switzerland would have been put into perspective.
Elisabeth Baume-Schneider had a difficult start. The trained social worker from the law takes over the Department of Justice from Karin Keller-Sutter and thus the difficult refugee dossier in a time characterized by strong migration movements.
The castling pushed through by the commoners is as Machiavellian as it is understandable. Machiavellian, because the bourgeois quartet bluntly followed the principle of “The Winner Takes It All”. Understandable, because civil cooperation in the Federal Council has not always been at its best in recent years. The affair surrounding Berset’s ex-head of communications and chief strategist Peter Lauener is still not over. Lauener is suspected of having provided selected media with advance information about upcoming measures during the leaden months of the pandemic. In addition – and that weighs much more heavily in Berne – he is said to have ensured that members of the Federal Council, who saw things differently than he did, received bad press and fell out over it.
A special prosecutor is investigating the matter, and Lauener is presumed innocent. Berset is still attached to the affair: the Bernese political establishment has now punished him in its own way. On Wednesday, the United Federal Assembly elected him Federal President with the worst possible result, and on Thursday his colleagues sentenced him to a round of detentions in the EDI.
The main question that arises after this demonstration of power is: Are all members of the state government actually in the place where they can be of the greatest use? If the question is to be answered in the affirmative in a year’s time, the seven Federal Councilors must first take a simple multiple-choice test: Does the Swiss state government apply a) the Machiavelli principle or b) the principle of collegiality? The four commoners are now obliged to ensure that variant b is implemented.