The grand chamber initially disapproved of the bank’s bailout on Tuesday with 102 of the 200 votes.
(Photo: Reuters)
Zurich The Swiss parliament subsequently rejected the rescue package for Credit Suisse. The decision has no impact on the state-mandated takeover of the crisis bank by competitor UBS. However, it is a defeat, especially for the liberal Federal Councilor Karin Keller-Suter.
The finance department she manages, together with the Swiss National Bank (SNB), provided financial guarantees amounting to CHF 109 billion, which are intended to protect UBS against the financial risks of the takeover. These were launched on Sunday almost four weeks ago by emergency law and without the consent of Parliament.
The Finance Delegation, a six-person body set up to deal with such emergencies, among other things, has already approved the deal on behalf of Parliament. The fact that the parliamentarians are now retrospectively refusing to support the government for the rescue package is therefore primarily of symbolic value.
Opposition to the emergency merger formed on both the right and left of the political spectrum. In response to the banking crisis, the Greens and Social Democrats had called for stricter rules for banking supervision. The small chamber of parliament accommodated the Social Democrats in this demand on Wednesday.
The Council of States – the representation of the cantons – had offered the directly elected National Council approval for stricter rules for banking supervision. The prerequisite for this is that they agree to the state guarantees for the emergency takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS.
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At first it looked like the Social Democrats would agree to this deal. But before the crucial vote, Federal Councilor Keller-Suter, who is responsible for finance, had rejected stricter capital requirements for Swiss banks, with reference to the international set of rules for banking regulation Basel III, which would be amended anyway.
The Social Democrats (SP) faction therefore surprisingly voted against the rescue package. SP parliamentary group leader Roger Nordmann explained the voting behavior to the “Tagesanzeiger” as follows: “We cannot give our okay to the loans if the Federal Council and Parliament are not prepared to ensure that something like this never happens again.”
Pirmin Bischof, a member of the conservative Die Mitte party in the Council of States, said: “We agree that after the events of March 19 we cannot simply carry on.”
Ineffective banking regulation
On March 19, the state-sponsored rescue of Credit Suisse was announced by UBS. Bischof criticized: “The ‘too big to fail’ regulation simply had no effect. And that’s why we have to ask the government to come up with an amended law that solves this problem.”
The right-wing conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP) is also struggling with the deal: SVP parliamentarian Thomas Minder said: “We should only approve a deal if it’s good enough for the Confederation – at the moment this deal is only good enough for UBS. “A “no” is not the end of the world.
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The Swiss Bundesrat is not a coalition government like in Germany, but a proportional government in which the four largest parties in the country make up the seven ministers. They usually make decisions by consensus and represent them uniformly to the outside world. This gives the National Council a central role as a political stage – especially in the run-up to elections like the ones coming up this year.
After the session on the collapse of the airline Swissair and on measures to combat the corona pandemic, the Swiss Parliament met for an extraordinary session for only the third time since the turn of the century.
A survey of Swiss economists found that almost half of those surveyed did not think that UBS’s takeover of Credit Suisse was the best solution and that the bailout had damaged Switzerland’s reputation. According to a survey by the political research institute gfs.bern, a majority of the Swiss population does not support the takeover either.
With material from Reuters
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