Switzerland: Angst Rises In the Alps

By FREDERICK PAINTON AND ADAM ZAGORIN/ZURICH

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.

With reporting by Margaret Studer/Zurich and Ellen Wallace/Geneva