Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss Federal Council Wednesday announced that it will push for a two-step reform of the AI (Assurance Invalidité), Switzerland’s disability insurance programme. The financially ailing system will need a short-term plan that can be implemented very quickly, with other measures to be planned and approved by the end of 2010. The parliamentary vote to provide a cash injection to the AI must still be approved, in 2009, by popular vote, but in any event it will provide only a temporary solution to the federal programme’s chronic shortfall. The government has a deadline of 2017 to ensure that the AI has a healthy financial profile.

In 2007 Swiss citizens voted to cut benefits to the disabled and to reduce the number of new AI beneficiaries each year. The flip side of the vote was that employers would do more to help push a plan to focus on getting people off disability benefits and back at work through a stronger reintegration programme.

The AI had a deficit of CHF1.6 billion in 2006 and the number of people it covered rose from 3.2% to 5.3% between 1990 and 2005, according to swissinfo.

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