Forgotten World (81): Switzerland
A major theme of NightHawk is that we live in a wide and varied world and we should know more about other countries and other cultures and learn to respect them. Therefore, on 16 occasions now, I’ve had a week-long feature devoted to parts of the world that tend to be under-reported or even forgotten. You can check out the previous 80 entries here. This week, I am going to run an 17th series of postings on this theme.
Switzerland is a country in the middle of Europe that is most famous for its legendary neutrality of the last 500 years – informally for about 300 years and then formally since just after the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century. It remains in some ways an isolated country – it only joined the United Nations in 2002 and it is one of the few countries in Europe that is not a member of the European Union.
In spite of – and maybe because of – its neutrality and isolation, its 7.5 million citizens enjoy one of the most stable and one of the most affluent countries in the world. The country has a strong system of local devolution with much power in no less than 26 cantons. Under the constitution, the make-up of the government is not determined by parliamentary majority but in accordance with a four-party power-sharing agreement, established in 1959 and known as the “magic formula”.
Switzerland is a European cultural and linguistic crossroads; about two-thirds of the population speak German, around one-fifth French and about 7% Italian. Romansch, the fourth national language, is spoken by less than 1% of the population.
May 31st, 2007 at 12:06 pm
To speak about Switzerland being “one of the few countries in Europe that is not a member of the European Union” is not entirely accurate. Some of the largest countries in Europe (Russia, Turkey) are not members, as are a number of smaller ones (Norway, Switzerland, Serbia, etc.) Many million of Europeans actually live in these countries.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:51 am
OK, Eric, you are technically correct and I’ll amend the language when I add this posting to the “Forgotten World” page of my web site.
But, if I wanted to be pedantic, I would suggest that Russia and Turkey are more Asiatic countries than European and point out that the combined population of Norway, Switzerland and Serbia (22M) compared to the total population of the European Union (494M) is a mere 4.5%.