Most measures demanded are already in upcoming changes to law, says Federal Council
Swiss law to crack down on unsafe drivers, with or without popular vote
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss Federal Council Wednesday 9 May told Parliament it will not back a popular initiative calling for tougher measures against “chauffards” or road hogs, particularly those who injure or kill others. The cabinet says the proposal duplicates pending changes to legislation in two areas, a project to harmonize criminal penalties in a number of areas and the Via Secura road project.
The popular initiative calls for stiffer penalties: a driver’s license would be taken away for a longer period, fines would be heavier and their cars would be confiscated with the proceeds from sales going to help victims of road accidents. The government says the “quasi-totality” of these measures is covered by the pending legislation, but a final measure, to take away a driver’s license as a preventive action when serious charges are pending against a driver, was rejected by the council because it goes against the presumption of innocence.
Via Secura is making its way through parliamentary commissions of both houses, which have debated a number of details this winter, including limiting the duration of some driver’s licenses and setting a minimum age for cyclists.
The harmonization project calls for stronger penalties in the case of serious injury, putting the lives of others in danger or for homicide by negligence. The only difference here, compared to the initiative, says Bern, is that no minimum penalty is set for homicide by negligence or serious injuries due to negligence. On the other hand, the maximum penalties are increased.
Switzerland in 2011 had
Vercorin, canton Valais, in the heart of Alpine resort country
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Swiss citizens voted 11 March to put a cap of 20 percent on second homes as a proportion of any commune, throughout the country, but putting the law into effect is proving complicated.
The working group set up by the federal government to sort out the problems that have surfaced since the vote held their first meeting Tuesday 3 April in Bern to deal with the most urgent issues and set priorities.
The vote will require changes to existing laws, notably land use management legislation.
The first problem is to precisely define second homes, which the popular initiative voted into law did not do. Legal provisions covering the transition of a residence from secondary to primary or vice versa need to be reviewed to see how they are affected by the vote.
And the group will need to make recommendations for the treatment of existing buildings. Alpine resort areas are most affected: in Grimentz and St Luc in Valais and Laar in Graubuenden, for example, second homes make up more than 80 percent of the homes.
Four cantons have average rates above 20 percent: Graubuenden, Valais, Ticino and Obwald. By comparison, in Vaud the figure is 13 percent and in Geneva 11.2 percent.
The federal government noted in a study before the election that in some areas, where the infrastructure is weak, the high proportion of second homes is due to the population leaving rather than to an influx of newcomers.
Switzerland has an estimated half million second homes, with most of them not “commercialized” according to the pre-vote report. Their rate of occupancy is 30-40 days a year, rising to about 60 days a year if they are loaned or rented to family and friends. This low rate of occupancy, or cold beds as this is popularly known, was part of the drive behind the new law.
The working group will begin to consult with interested groups by mid-April with a goal of clarifying by the end of the summer legislative break the most urgent issues in terms of ordinances, then to begin work on the changes to the law.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – One of the most widely-watched US Supreme Court cases is underway this week in Washington DC, with the judges holding hearings 27-29 March on President Barack Obama’s health care plan. The plan was signed into law in 2010, but immediately challenged, initially by the State of Florida.
The hearing is key for a number of reasons:
- the sheer breadth of the plan, which would have a major impact on how Americans receive health care and how money is spent on it
- the outcome of the plan, considered Obama’s signature legislation, could have a major impact on this year’s presidential election
- Obama’s legislation writes into law the requirement for all Americans to have health care coverage, which its opponents say is unconstitutional
- the three days of hearings make it the longest case in over 50 years.
The Guardian explains that a key issue right now is to determine if the court can really hear the case:, noting that it “focused on whether the punishment for not buying mandatory health insurance under the new law is a tax or a penalty. If it is a tax, then under a 19th century law, the Anti-Injunction Act, the legislation cannot be challenged until the tax is collected beginning in 2015, and the court would not be able to hear the case now. If it is a penalty, the lawsuit can go ahead.”
A decision will be made in June based on this week’s hearings.
Links to other sites: Boston.com, CNN, Economist (UK), Fox News, The Globe & Mail, Canada, Guardian (UK), Voice of America
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The thin line between personal freedom in the form of public nudity and public health concerns over such touchy issues as bare bums on restaurant chairs may soon lead to tougher legislation in that city of baring-it-all comfortably, San Francisco. The Los Angeles Times notes that a debate is underway in California over acceptable behaviour since a city official introduced “a measure to put limits on nudity and provide posterior protection for public seating”.
The San Francisco Chronicle sees the new legislation as one more effort to make the city appear “kooky” because it is so limited in scope. “Why? If these guys were opening a trench coat and exposing themselves to bystanders in a supermarket parking lot we’d call them creeps. But if they sit on public chairs and expose themselves to bystanders, they’re defenders of free speech. Here’s some free speech – when moms and dads walk their kids to school, they don’t want to see you naked. This isn’t a civil rights issue, it’s just obnoxious.”
The newspaper points out that even Berkeley and Marin have anti-nudity laws.
ABC7 news report
US pressure on Swiss for bank names accompanies Fatca, FBar pressure on overseas Americans
Paradeplatz in Zurich: Credit Suisse
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Two Swiss-German newspapers spilled the news Sunday 4 September that the US is pressuring Switzerland with a short deadline and legal threats over bank data related to Americans suspected of hiding taxable assets in Switzerland. SonntagsZeitung and NZZ write that the US is demanding that Swiss bank Credit Suisse and several other banks hand over the names of a significant number of bank clients by Tuesday 6 September.
The newspapers are basing their information on details that are reportedly part of a three-page letter written by US Deputy Attorney General James Cox to Swiss diplomat Michael Ambuhl, threatening legal action if US demands are not met to furnish the names of US clients who handed the banks $50,000 or more between 2002 and 2010.
The story is being widely covered by media outside Switzerland as part of a Swiss banks and “tax cheats” saga, an over-simplification of a situation that has many threads, only one of which is how wealthy Americans or green card holders hide their money abroad.
FATCA, FBar the new overseas American tax lingo
American Citizens Abroad is calling for US Fatca legislation to be repealed
The news comes as US citizens abroad grapple with the implications of two extended deadlines: a very short deadline extension to 9 September announced at the end of August by the IRS, the tax arm of the US government, to come forward if they have not filed FBar forms in the past, and the recent one-year extension to 2014 of implementation of the new Fatca (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) legislation.
Under Fatca, foreign banks will have to announce, to the US, assets of American citizens who are clients, whether they are based in the US and using offshore services or resident abroad and using the bank to handle daily banking needs, including regular payments such as rent or mortgages, salaries and pension funds or trusts that are their main source of income.
American Citizens Abroad, a non-profit group based in Geneva that works closely with both Republican and Democrat groups for American citizens living outside the US, says that Fatca is “using a bulldozer to go after an ant hill” and that the price to the US will ultimately be too high. The group wrote, in a 31 August letter to US Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and top US tax officials demanding that Fatca be repealed, that
“Fatca will provoke a serious backlash from foreign governments who find it unacceptable, and rightly so, that the United States unilaterally extend US law worldwide.
This is financial imperialism. At a time when the United States needs the cooperation of the rest of the world to help resolve its major domestic debt problems and to reinvigorate its economy, it is counter-productive and dangerous to provoke foreign governments and force their financial institutions to become the policemen of the IRS, by requiring that they spend billions of dollars in compliance for the sole benefit of the IRS, and to force them to break their own domestic laws to do so.”
Spotlight on Credit Suisse, but it’s not the only targeted Swiss bank
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Zurich’s legislators have decided to better organize the city’s legal prostitution system by tidying up where and how it can be done. One city lawmaker told Tages-Anzeiger that the new measures are not so much anti-prostitution as anti-human trafficking. Many of the prostitutes are not well-informed about their rights, according to the city, and a licensing system will help build lines of direct communication to keep them better informed.
The change that has drawn the most publicity is the creation of what are called “sex boxes” in the Altstatten neighbourhood, while prostitution will be banned in the city centre Sihlquai and Langstrasse neighbourhoods. It will be allowed in the hot night spots area of Niederdorf and Allmend Brunau, where prostitutes will be able to solicit clients in cars.
Prostitution has been legal in Switzerland since 1992, but street-walking is limited to small areas.
Zurich introduced a ban on “street windows” in 2003 in an effort to keep prostitutes from using windows to sell their goods and thus get around the street-walking limits. The number of prostitutes has grown, the city council reports, without giving a number, but there were reportedly 3,000 in 2003, swissinfo reported at the time.
Traffic lights in Texas could soon have a logjam, with texting in cars allowed only at stoplights after 1 September.
Texas, with its wide-open roads and a legacy as a frontier-minded state, is about to clamp down on drivers who text, with one legislator saying the practice is 20 times more dangerous than drunk driving. The lower house is about to pass the bill, which goes through a final reading 8 April and the upper house is expected to back it.
Sixty percent of US states have bans, according to the Houston Chronicle.
The state-wide ban would provide a more uniform legal ban, since several municipal areas currently have ordinances against texting while driving, but they vary. San Antonio, for example, bans reading and texting while at a stop light. The new law would allow this, but forbid it while a car is moving.
Republican lawmakers in the state of Wisconsin have dramatically curtailed the collective bargaining rights of state workers in what National Public Radio calls “one of the strongest blows to the power of unions in years”. The measures were pushed through with sudden political maneuvering. The vote, after a standoff of nearly a month, sent thousands of angry protesters to the state capitol. Madison, the capital of the state, has been the scene of protests, for days, by tens of thousands of people as the acrimonious debates wore on.
Links to other sites: Fox News (with AP), Los Angeles Times, Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, NPR
Zach Wahl, a 19-year-old engineering student in Iowa, is quickly becoming a YouTube star following his testimony in Des Moines, at the state capitol, about growing up as the child of a lesbian couple, one of the country’s first test-tube babies of a lesbian mother. Wahl made a passionate plea for lawmakers to not approve a state House resolution that would make same-sex marriage illegal but also forbid recognition of civil unions.
US Senate Republicans failed Wednesday 2 February in their bid to repeal the healthcare act that was passed in March 2010, as expected, but before the vote the lawmakers passed an amendment to reduce the healthcare plan’s paperwork for companies. The law, a key part of President Obama’s reforms, will provide coverage to 30 million uninsured people in the US, but it still faces hurdles. Two of four state judges who have ruled on it have said it is unconstitutional and the US Department of Justice has said it will fight these rulings, taking it to the Supreme Court if necessary. Iowa is taking its own approach to fighting the bill, with the state lower house passing legislation Wednesday to allow people to opt out of the federal system.
Links to other sites: BBC, Des Moines Register, NPR, Washington Post
Gov’t opens for consultation proposed changes to law for “too big to fail banks”
Geneva lawyer, professor to head board of Swiss financial regulator
Anne Heritier Lachat will chair Finma board in 2011
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss Federal Council said early Wednesday afternoon 22 December that it will carry out its mandate for tax talks with Germany and the United Kingdom, following consultations with parliamentary commissions and the cantons. Switzerland in October 2010 signed agreements with the other two countries to open talks, which are now scheduled to begin in early 2011. “The goal with Germany and the UK will be to achieve regularization of previously undeclared assets as well as a final withholding tax for future income. In return, Switzerland should gain better market access for financial services, in particular,” the council said in an e-mailed statement.
The key points for the negotiations are considered confidential and will not be published, according to Bern.
The talks will be led for the Swiss by State Secretary Michael Ambühl, head of the State Secretariat for International Financial Matters (SIF).
New “too big to fail” laws could come into force by 2012
Animals used in EU life sciences research, 2007 report from the European Commission
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A group of life sciences researchers from Switzerland, Britain, France, Germany and Sweden are fighting back against what they believe is public misperceptions about the use of animals in basic research. Fifty scientists who signed the Basel Declaration in the Swiss city 29 November have published notice of the new agreement in the 6 December online issue of the scientific journal Nature. They are “pledging to be more open about their research, and to engage in more public dialogue,” according to the journal.
The group have been the target of abuse and threats from animal rights activists for several years, but a newer concern for them is legal decisions in both countries that have halted research projects.
One of the more public incidents in the activists versus researchers fight occurred in August 2009, when Daniel Vassella’s summer home in the Alps was set on fire. Vassella was at that point CEO of Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis. Two legal decisions have had less publicity: German neuroscientist Andreas Kreiter was unable to renew his license to continue basic research on primates and in Switzerland, Kevan Martin, a director of the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich, also saw his license revoked by the canton, in 2007 and 2006 respectively. Martin appealed his case but in 2009 the Swiss high court upheld the Zurich decision, saying that his work would not provide society with benefits in the near future.
Switzerland has had laws protecting the dignity of animals since 2004. Germany, as a member of the European Union, will be drafting laws as part of EU-wide directives on legislation covering animals.
Federal Council will consult on plan for how big banks can fail, negotiate withholding tax on foreigners’ accounts
Measles, tougher penal sentences, electricity suppliers, corporate tax rates all on the 2011 schedule
Swiss Federal Council (cabinet): government publishes its 2011 agenda
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss Government, fresh from the defeat of its counter-initiative in the vote on foreign convicts 28 November, has set out an ambitious agenda for work it expects to complete in 2011. This will be the final session before a new parliament is elected 23 October 2011.
Two pieces of legislation, one calling for a tougher penal code and the other for greater efforts to integrate foreigners into Swiss society, were planned before the weekend vote, but they must now be coordinated with a constitutional change, the results of the 28 November popular initiative, where Swiss voters chose automatic expulsion of foreign convicts.
Negotiations over undeclared assets in Swiss banks confirmed
The council confirmed Tuesday that negotiations are already underway with some countries, and it intends to open negotiations with other key countries, to “regularize” undeclared assets coming to Swiss banks from outside Switzerland. The main tool Switzerland intends to use is a withholding tax but the government says the negotiations will also include a commitment by the Swiss to “ensure, as far as possible, that undeclared assets from [countries with negotiations] will not in future come to Switzerland”.
Bankruptcy proceedings for key banks would limit pay, free trade agreements get priority
The cabinet will consult with interested parties on the details of how banks that are critical to the national financial system would be allowed to move into bankruptcy if they fail. A particular aspect of this is the decision by the government to limit payment to bankers for any financial institution that comes under the government’s care. Wide consultation on drafts for new laws with major impact is standard procedure in Switzerland and proposed legislation is then revised based on feedback before it goes to parliament.
Trade talks to be accelerated
Nyon train station, CFF controllers will be helped by new transport police
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss transport police, who will have the right to make provisional arrests, will become part of the CFF rail system starting in 2011.
The Federal Council Wednesday 27 January approved legislation drawn up by a parliamentary transport commission which will create two security systems for public transport companies. The transport police, who will be identifiable by their uniforms, will be employed only by the CFF, and they will have greater policing powers than those given to security officers, who will be used by smaller transport companies.
The US Senate passed the final of three hurdles for new health care legislation, and has scheduled a Christmas Eve day vote to pass its version of a bill. The 24 December vote requires a simple majority and is expected to pass. The next critical stage: negotiations with the House of Representatives in January, but if both houses of Congress have passed bills, President Barack Obama is much closer to seeing one of his key campaign promises fulfilled.
Russia is holding a day of mourning for the 112 people, now all identified, who died when a club caught fire Friday night 4 December in the city of Perm in the Urals. The fire appears to have been started by fireworks inside the club, officials say. Some deaths were caused by inhaling deadly plastic fumes, others by the smoke and flames. Four people are under arrest but a fifth is fighting for his life, one of the 123 injured who are hospitalized. The government has banned club fireworks and is reviewing safety legislation.
Links to other sites: Moscow Times, Ria Novosti
New Swiss Army knife © 2009 Photopress AG Victorinox
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss customs officials near Basel 3 August seized boxes with 558 kg of imported goods for Victorinox, one of Switzerland’s two Swiss Army knife manufacturers. Acting on a judicial complaint filed eight months ago by Thomas Minder, the boss of mouthwash maker Trybol, the customs at Muttenz, canton Basel State, held 116 boxes of bags, locks, and umbrellas made in China and Taiwan with the Victorinox logo.
Victorinox markets a number of goods that have nothing to do with pocket knives, including perfume. Production of many of these products are outsourced abroad. The pocket knives are all produced in Switzerland.
Schaffhausen, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A four-year-old boy was bitten by a one-year-old Rotweiler dog while his family picnicked near a main road in an industrial zone in Schaffhausen, north of Zurich, Sunday, around 17:00. The boy is in serious condition with head injuries but his life is not in danger.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Canton Vaud 1 September 2009 will join the growing ranks of Swiss cantons that ban smoking in public areas. The final discussions in the cantonal parliament concluded today 23 June and the law will now go into effect.
China is revising its law on state secrets, which dates back to 1969, to include the Internet and other technology developments. The draft law covers efforts to safeguard secrets and prevent leaks. A recent government study showed that 70 percent of leaks occurred through the Internet. The new law includes adding firewalls and ensuring that computers with state secrets are not connected to the Internet, but the focus is on greater efficiency. Xinhua reports that while the United States generates about 100,000 classified documents a year China has millions, but some progress has been made in reducing the number. “In 2004, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs declassified diplomatic documents compiled after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, a pioneering move among government agencies. In 2005 . . . it was announced that death tolls in natural disasters and related information were no longer considered as state secrets.”
The French parliament is expected to pass a “Draconian” Internet piracy law today. People caught illegally downloading copyrighted material would be given three warnings before their Internet access was cut off for a year. The proposed legislation could run afoul of the Eurpean Convention of Human Rights, however, reports the Financial Times, which says it would then be tied up in a lengthy legal battle.
Sweden’s parliament approved same-sex marriage legislation Wednesday 1 April by of a vote of 261-22 with 16 members choosing not to vote. The only party to oppose the new law was the Christian Democrats. The legislation will take effect May 1 2009. CNN
Bern, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – The French and Italian-speaking cantons’ police and justice departments Tuesday 24 March called on the Swiss federal government to take the lead in putting in place a kidnapping alert system before the end of 2009.
Bern, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – The lower house of Parliament has sent back to a judicial commission for further study proposed legislation covering family names that would bring Switzerland into line with a 1994 decision by the European Court of Human Rights. The commission has already spent eight years studying various options.
Doctors have shown no-smoking support with stickers restaurants and bars can use
Geneva, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Geneva’s battle to ban smoking continues: Thursday night the Grand Conseil, the canton’s legislative body, voted during a noisy and tense debate, to soften the no-smoking law proposed by the Conseil d’Etat, the canton’s executive body.
