LETTER FROM GENEVA
Self-administered, the collective sanction was announced on Wednesday March 27 at the end of the weekly working session of the Federal Council, the Swiss government, in Bern. From 1er January 2025, the seven Swiss ministers, the Federal Chancellor – secretary general of the executive – as well as their partners “will give up” to the annual pass, worth 4,234 Swiss francs (4,350 euros) which allows them to ski for free anywhere in the country’s many ski resorts.
It is not the lack of snow from an erratic and too mild winter in the Alps which motivated this decision, as anecdotal as it is symbolic, but another change in climate, on the political front in this case.
On March 3, Swiss citizens voted in favor of a popular left-wing initiative for a greater social state. A real earthquake, in a country accustomed neither to left turns nor to the whims of public opinion. Retirees will thus receive a thirteenth monthly pension from 2026, against the wishes of the coalition government, mainly on the right, which now finds itself forced to find the means to finance it. According to estimates, it will cost an additional 4 billion to 5 billion francs (up to 5.2 billion euros) to the otherwise well-stocked federal coffers.
During the campaign, of rare bitterness by Swiss standards, the right-wing parties and the employers, sensing the risk of an unprecedented defeat at the polls, did not skimp on the means to divert their fellow citizens from a temptation often described as a “addition of French statism”. For example, they brought five former ministers out of oblivion, including two octogenarians who had retired from state affairs for a long time, to prevent the “failure of the system” that new inconsiderate social largesse would not fail to provoke in the short term.
Sound management
Alas, the maneuver backfired on its authors, with social networks lashing out against the “financial wisdom” of these august characters who live… with an annual pension for life of 230,000 Swiss francs since they left their ministerial functions. An amount that they often supplement with folding seats on the boards of directors of some of the most powerful companies in the Confederation. Retired federal councilors also benefit from this free access to ski lifts which will disappear.
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