Update 11:50 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The maximum number of days an unemployed person can receive state help could be reduced from 400 to 260 days for under-55s, while childless under-25s might see their entitlement reduced to 130 days of benefits, and job-seekers under 30 would be obliged to accept jobs for which they may be overqualified if measures voted by Switzerland’s lower house become law. These are some of the measures Switzerland’s lower house of parliament. The National Council voted for the measures Wednesday 9 December in an effort to slash the budget of the heavily indebted unemployment insurance agency by another CHF210 million after the upper house had already pared it by about CHF575m.
The measures need to be reconciled with the version previously voted by the Council of States before becoming law.
Correction 19:31 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland’s upper house of parliament voted 3 December to transfer to private companies the authority to check cars for valid autoroute stickers and file charges against drivers who do not have them, at Switzerland’s seven motorway border crossings. The lower house of Parliament has opposed this move, saying it is the exclusive purview of the state. The motion now returns to the lower house.
The budget commission of the upper house agrees with the government that customs officials should dedicate themselves to more complex tasks, leaving the job of checking stickers to a private company.
Photo: E Wallace
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The upper house of Parliament, the Council of States, voted 2 December to approve the budget for Presence Switzerland, the agency charged with cultivating Switzerland’s image abroad.
The upper house budget committee took note of the lower house’s prior decision to cut the agency’s budget but said that the money would be well-invested to refurbish the country’s image, given the outcome of the past weekend’s vote on minarets.
The lower house had voted to strike CHF2.5 million from the agency’s budget for an advertising campaign in the US, arguing that this was only to polish UBS’s tarnished image there.
Links to other sites: Council of States deliberations (Ger), Presence Switzerland, Romandie News
Doris Leuthard, Swiss president in 2010
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Doris Leuthard becomes president of Switzerland in 2010. The 46-year-old PDC (Christian Democrat) member was elected comfortably (153 of 187 votes) by parliament for the top job, a one-year post that is rotated among the seven cabinet members, the Swiss Federal Council. She is the only member of the council not to have yet held the post. She was in line for the job, as vice-president in 2009, but nevertheless needed the approval of the Federal Assembly, parliament’s two houses. Leuthard becomes the youngest president since 1934.
Leuthard is the third woman to serve as president of Switzerland: Ruth Dreifuss was the first, in 1999 and Micheline Calmy-Rey the second, in 2007.
