Language regions are more evenly represented in government again
Published: Wednesday, Dec 13th 2023, 12:40
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With the election of Beat Jans to the Federal Council, Switzerland's language regions are once again more evenly represented in the national government. For a year, Latin-speaking Switzerland was overrepresented in the Federal Council.
Since the election of Elisabeth Baume-Schneider from Jura to the Federal Council in December 2022, three people from French-speaking Switzerland, one person from Ticino and three people from German-speaking Switzerland have been members of the national government.
Since 1990, the Federal Constitution has stipulated that the national regions and language regions must be "adequately" represented in the Federal Council. Based on the proportion of the population, just under a third of the Council should come from the French, Italian and Romansh-speaking regions. That would be around 2.3 members of the Federal Council.
This is not the first time that the mother tongues in the Federal Council have not corresponded to the language relations in Switzerland: This was already the case in 1917. Back then, Gustave Ador from Geneva replaced Arthur Hoffmann from St. Gallen. After his election, Ador sat on the Council alongside Giuseppe Motta from Ticino, Camille Decoppet (VD) and Felix-Louis Calonder from Graubünden.
The latter was the first Romansh speaker in the national government. He was replaced by a Swiss-German speaker in 1920.
With Jans' election to the national government, the regions of the country will also be better represented in the Federal Council. Albert Rösti from Bern comes from the Espace Mittelland. The large canton of Vaud will be represented by Guy Parmelin and Ticino by Ignazio Cassis. Karin Keller-Sutter comes from Eastern Switzerland and Viola Amherd represents Valais.
Following Ueli Maurer's departure from office, the populous canton of Zurich no longer has a member of the government. There are still four cantons that have never had a member of the Federal Council: Uri, Schwyz, Nidwalden and Schaffhausen.
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