TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/081991/0819003.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 10.2 KB | 224 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 38

SWITZERLAND

Angst Rises In the Alps


Marking its 700th birthday, Europe's most successful nation frets
that in order to keep up it may have to abandon its splendid
isolation

By FREDERICK PAINTON AND ADAM ZAGORIN/ZURICH -- With reporting by
Margaret Studer/Zurich and Ellen Wallace/Geneva


    Not even the Swiss can resist making disparaging remarks
about themselves and their country. Poet Carl Spitteler claimed
that if the Swiss had created the Alps, they would not have
been so high. Playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt noted that his
country's vaunted neutrality "makes me think of a virgin who
earns her living in a bordello but wants to remain chaste." Not
surprisingly, the Swiss celebrated the septicentennial of their
confederation this month with restraint.

    "Seven hundred years, that's enough." So went the slogan
of some 300 left-leaning intellectuals protesting ceremonies
for a nation they consider too rich, too smug and too
hypocritical to rate any respect for its age. Even the voters
of the central Swiss cantons -- loosely the equivalent of
America's 13 original states -- opted against any spectacular
celebrations. They judged it an environmentally harmful and
needless extravagance.

    The climax of the festivities took place this month in the
Rutli meadow overlooking Lake Lucerne. The field can be reached
only on foot, so the celebrators clambered up the bank of the
lake to gather at the historic site where, according to legend,
rebellious farmers from the founding cantons swore the first
oath of Swiss allegiance in 1291. The backdrop was dramatic but
fittingly modest: no parades down grand boulevards, just a
nostalgic tribute by a modern industrial nation to its simpler,
farming roots. When night fell, bonfires and fireworks lit the
sky.

    Beyond a distaste for excess, the reluctance of the Swiss
to indulge in a splashy birthday bash also reflects a country
increasingly ill at ease with itself. The questions raised go
to the very foundations of what made Switzerland exceptional --
its status as an Alpine refuge protected from the wars and
revolutions that have ravaged the rest of Europe through the
centuries. The Swiss like to say they are less a nation than a
conglomerate formed by disparate mountain people under pressure
to defend themselves against outside threats -- from the
Habsburgs and the Bourbons to Hitler.

    Europe now is once again caught up in a period of rapid
change, riding the dynamic toward ever closer unity. By the
beginning of 1993, if all goes well, the 12 members of the
European Community will have created a single market that, with
345 million people, rivals the U.S. in economic muscle. Far from
prizing their traditional standoffishness, many of the 6 million
Swiss are asking if they can afford to remain on the sidelines
of this new Europe. Does neutrality still make sense as the risk
of war in Europe recedes and the vision of a confederation
stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals advances? Can
Switzerland hope someday to join the E.C. and still retain its
highly decentralized system of direct democracy?

    Ironically, Switzerland is a minimodel for the new
confederal Europe. No melting pot here; instead it is a
patchwork stitched together for common convenience -- and
prosperity -- with each part retaining its distinctive culture
and mores. There is no center, no dominating commercial or
political capital. Power here is even more discreet than money,
and like money in this richest of all European countries, it is
spread around.

    The seat of federal government is in Bern, a medieval city
of arcades, spires and fountains, full of politicians,
government officials and farmers, whose open market in front of
the gray-green stone parliament building is a reminder of the
country's revered peasant past. A world away is Geneva, severe
and handsome, with a touch of francophone chic, an international
city, where summits are held and diplomatic deals are made.
Solid, comfortable Zurich is at once the banking center and,
along with Basel, at the bend of the Rhine, the cultural heart
for German speakers.

    For all these varieties of Swiss, the temptation to march
in the European parade is at hand, but it is far from clear
whether Switzerland will succumb. Last June, in one of the most
important referendums in years, a majority rejected adoption of
a value-added tax, a reform that would have brought the Swiss
fiscal system closer to that of its European neighbors. Says
Christoph Blocher, Zurich industrialist and member of the
federal parliament who is leading a campaign against E.C.
membership: "If Switzerland joined, it would have a lot to lose:
sovereignty, independence, democratic rights, neutrality and
security, and it would suffer lower wages and higher taxes."

    The E.C.'s momentum confronts Switzerland with an
immensely difficult choice: to join, thereby yielding some power
to Brussels, and benefit directly from the dynamism of the new
Europe, or to stay out and retain its jealously guarded
independence. A third option involves the talks now under way
with Brussels to create an economic area in which goods,
services, capital and labor would flow freely, thereby according
Switzerland many of the benefits of E.C. membership but without
a loss of sovereignty. The price of that compromise is that
Switzerland would not have a strong voice at the table where
decisions affecting its future are made.

    Many businessmen and political leaders believe the greater
risks lie in not joining. In the long run, they reason, the
emerging new Europe will forge ahead, leaving Switzerland behind
with a declining and aging population, still prosperous and
tranquil but stagnating outside the mainstream of history. "The
train is leaving," says Hans Baer of Zurich's Julius Baer Banks.

    Businessmen like Baer worry less about adverse economic
effects than about the psychological and social impact of going
it alone. If Switzerland stays outside the E.C., they say, Swiss
students will lack the Europe-wide educational opportunities
offered other European youth; Swiss scientific and industrial
research might suffer from not joining in bigger projects.

    Although large Swiss multinationals like the engineering
giant Asea Brown Boveri and food conglomerate Nestle have a
global presence, scores of less dynamic firms do not and could
find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Even
Switzerland's powerful banks and insurance companies will come
under pressure as E.C.-based rivals operate in newly deregulated
markets. "We must look at Switzerland as if it is a
corporation," says the head of the economy department,
Jean-Pascal Delamuraz. "How competitive are we? Perhaps we have
been successful for too long. Perhaps we have lost a little of
our dynamism."

    For the time being, that is not evident. By most
standards, the country can claim to be Europe's most successful
society. Its citizens work longer hours, save more money and
invest more, privately, in research and development than any of
its neighbors, including the Germans. The payoff has been
generous. In 1989 the GNP per capita was $30,270, the highest
in Europe (and 43% above the U.S. level). Unemployment, at 1.1%
of the work force, is virtually nonexistent. By comparison,
unemployment in France currently stands at 9.5%; in Germany, at
6.3%.

    Slowly, though, the Swiss are becoming more like other
Europeans. The majority that opposed a reduction in the working
week from 42 to 40 hours is eroding because more and more,
life-style is taking priority over industriousness. Church
attendance is dropping in a country once exceptional for its
piety. Even the country's citizen army, a hallowed symbol of
national identity capable of fielding one of the largest and
best-equipped forces in Europe, has lost public esteem. In a
referendum two years ago, 35.6% voted to abolish the armed
forces.

    The Swiss have also discovered they are not immune to the
social ills that afflict others. The country has Europe's
highest incidence of AIDS and a rising drug-related crime
problem. In Zurich's Platzspitz, a sordid, officially sanctioned
Needle Park nestles only a few minutes' walk from the banking
district where the city's fabled gnomes control the levers of
the national economy. Narcotics are sold openly amid the
greenery, while dazed, long-haired youths inject themselves
using free syringes provided by Zurich's local government in a
controversial program to control AIDS.

    To many reformers, Europe appears as a potential remedy to
a system of government so decentralized that it is often
paralyzed in the face of change. Each of the country's 26
cantons enjoys virtual autonomy on everything from traffic
regulations to taxes and schooling. Those favoring change also
argue that it might fix an apathy problem that stands out in
Europe (though it would not in the U.S.). Only about 40% of
Swiss voters go to the polls, compared with an average of 60%
in the 1940s. Nicolas Hayek, who is credited with saving the
country's watch industry from Japanese competition by promoting
the immensely popular Swatch (80 million have been sold
worldwide since the brand was launched nine years ago),
complains, "We used to be a mountain people who got things done.
Now we are stagnating in a system that demands consensus above
all else."

    The rest of Europe can't help wondering what the fuss is
all about at a time when Swiss accomplishments seem more
relevant than ever. Last January Germans were asked what nation
they most admired. Forty percent chose Switzerland. Six months
earlier, then Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze had
sent an official delegation to Bern to study Swiss democratic
federalism as a possible solution to the gathering movements of
national independence in his country.

    The Swiss are very aware -- arguably too aware -- of what
they have achieved, and for this reason, they do not for the
present seem ready to gamble away a 700-year-old success story.
But for the first time in this century, they must at least
begin to contemplate an alternative destiny.