National Council wants more commitment to peace in Ukraine
Published: Tuesday, Mar 5th 2024, 12:00
Back to Live Feed
The National Council wants Switzerland to do more to promote peace in Ukraine. The large chamber wants a significant increase in humanitarian aid to the country. In addition, the Federal Council should actively offer Geneva as a venue for negotiations and obtain a mandate for negotiations from the UN.
On Tuesday, the upper chamber passed a motion to this effect by Thomas Rechsteiner, a member of the Innerrhoden Center National Council. The center group received support from the left wing of the Council and the GLP. The Council of States must now deal with the motion.
The proposal does not specify how humanitarian aid should be financed. Also on Tuesday morning, the National Council rejected the idea of recording the expenditure for aid to Ukraine as extraordinary and creating a separate fund for it. This would have meant that the expenditure would have been exempt from the debt brake rules.
The Federal Council was against the motion, as its concerns had already been met. A UN mandate for peace talks was also not necessary. Whether Switzerland's good offices would be used depended in particular on Russia and Ukraine.
©Keystone/SDA
English 
German 
French 
Spanish 
Arabic