Vice-Chancellor Viktor Rossi (GLP) elected as new Federal Chancellor
Published: Wednesday, Dec 13th 2023, 14:10
Updated At: Wednesday, Dec 13th 2023, 14:10
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GLP member Viktor Rossi succeeds Walter Thurnherr (center) as Federal Chancellor. The former Vice-Chancellor easily won the election on Wednesday. He received 135 out of 245 valid votes in the second ballot. The three other candidates had no chance.
Rossi was the first of the four candidates to officially throw his hat into the ring. He knows the Federal Chancellery inside out. He has been Vice-Chancellor since May 2019 and heads the Federal Council division of the Federal Chancellery.
He has the professional and personal skills for the role, wrote the GLP, which officially nominated and supported him. Rossi is multilingual and valued as a leader, a "solution-oriented mediator between the departments" and "an active shaper of the digital transformation of the Federal Administration".
"Driving digitalization forward"
The Federal Council division headed by Rossi includes the section that handles the 2,500 or so items of business that the Federal Council adopts each year. This section also organizes the responses to around 1,300 parliamentary procedural requests each year. As Vice-Chancellor, Rossi is present at the weekly meetings of the Federal Council.
"I stand for continuity at the head of the Federal Chancellery and would like to consistently drive forward the digitalization of the administration," said Rossi, a Swiss-Italian dual citizen born in 1968, in the run-up to the election.
Rossi trained as a chef and then studied economics and law. He then taught as a commercial teacher before becoming director of the Biel vocational school in 1999. In 2009 he took over the presidency of the Commercial Rectors' Conference of the Canton of Berne and in October 2010 he moved to the Federal Chancellery.
Rossi visibly moved
In his inaugural speech, Rossi said that he would do everything in his power to do justice to this major task. In his speech in four languages, he named the digitalization of government services as a priority.
According to Rossi, the Federal Chancellery should be a good partner to the Federal Assembly. He wants to push ahead with strengthening Switzerland's resilience to crises.
In his speech to the members of the National Council and Council of States, Rossi referred to his migration background. His parents had come to Switzerland from southern Italy and southern Carinthia in the 1950s in the hope of a better life. "This country, which was foreign to them at the time, quickly became our country, our Switzerland. I can hardly put into words what it means to me to be here now."
First GLP Federal Chancellor
Rossi is the first Federal Chancellor from the ranks of the GLP. To date, one female chancellor and eight male chancellors have been members of the FDP. The former CVP and current centrist party has so far provided one female chancellor and three male chancellors, and the SP one chancellor.
The Federal Chancellor is the Chief of Staff of the Federal Council and attends its meetings. He has an advisory vote and can submit motions. He is commonly referred to as the "eighth Federal Councillor".
Center renounces office
In the race for the office of Federal Chancellor alongside Rossi were SVP members Gabriel Lüchinger and Nathalie Goumaz as well as the independent Lukas Gresch-Brunner. Only Lüchinger was able to challenge Rossi to some extent. He received 103 votes in the second ballot.
Three of the four Federal Council parties decided not to stand for election in advance for tactical reasons, according to media reports. The Center Party, which has held the office of Federal Chancellor since 2008 with Thurnherr and previously Corina Casanova, no longer laid claim to it either. In the medium term, the Center Party is aiming for a second seat in the Federal Council.
©Keystone/SDA
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