PRESIDENT Alain Berset announced Wednesday that he will quit the government at the end of 2023, in a surprise move after more than a decade of ministerial service.
Berset, 51, told his colleagues on Switzerland’s seven-member Federal Council government that he was planning to quit the body at the end of the year, saying it was “the right time to leave”.
The wealthy Alpine country’s presidency rotates annually among the council members. Berset joined the government in 2012 and is in his second spell as president, having previously served in 2018.
“This morning I told the head of the parliament, as well as my colleagues on the Federal Council, that I plan to leave the Federal Council at the end of this legislature, therefore at the end of the year,” Berset told a hastily-arranged press conference in the capital Bern.
“I have the feeling that I’ve accomplished what is possible. I have given everything,” he said.
Berset is Switzerland’s interior minister and as the minister in charge of health, he played a key role in the country’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
He was also a critical player in arranging the emergency takeover of the stricken bank Credit Suisse by its larger rival UBS over a weekend in March this year.
He feared Switzerland’s second-biggest bank would otherwise have imploded within days triggering domestic chaos and potentially a global banking crisis.
