Europe under Pressure: What Switzerland Can Learn
Europe is under security- and economic-policy pressure. A blanket picture of crisis does not help Switzerland: what matters are robust data and concrete preparedness.
Europe is neither "on fire" nor can its stability be measured by a single figure, government or headline. Whoever lumps security, economic performance, crime and political majorities together overlooks the decisive differences. This matters for Switzerland: it is not an EU member, but it is closely linked to Europe through trade, energy, transport, data routes and financial markets.
A comparison with five or ten years ago nevertheless shows a clear shift. There is no overall index for "Europe's stability". Risks, however, have changed. The right question is therefore not whether Europe is safe or unsafe across the board, but where the strains are growing – and what preparedness follows from that for Switzerland.
Security: The Pressure on Europe Is Real
The war in Ukraine began as early as 2014. With the large-scale Russian invasion of 2022, however, the European security situation took on a new dimension. Switzerland's Security Policy Strategy 2026 explicitly names the war against Ukraine, hybrid threats and critical dependencies as challenges for the state, the economy and society.
This includes cyberattacks, espionage, sabotage and disinformation. Such risks are not new. What is new is their significance in today's security-policy environment and the dense interconnection of critical infrastructure. For Switzerland this means: an incident does not have to start at its border to have consequences. Disruptions to energy, logistics, payment transactions or digital services can have cross-border effects.
Switzerland's response must therefore be concrete: resilient infrastructure, reliable crisis communication, cyber defence and good cooperation between the Confederation, the cantons, the municipalities and companies. Alarmism does not help here. What is needed is an assessment of the situation that neither plays down nor exaggerates real risks.
Economy: Weak Growth Is Not a Collapse
The economic picture is differentiated as well. The European Commission expects growth of 1.1 percent in the EU for 2026. Energy prices, geopolitical uncertainty and trade-policy conflicts are slowing development. At the same time, it expects an unemployment rate of 6.0 percent. That points to a weak economy, but not to an economic collapse across Europe.
Forecasts remain assumptions, not facts. They can change with energy prices, wars, tariffs or financial-market turbulence. For export-oriented Swiss companies, what counts is therefore not only individual headlines from Germany, France or Spain, but demand, exchange rates, supply chains and investment decisions in many markets.
The SECO expects growth of 1.7 percent for Switzerland in 2026, but names the Iran conflict, high energy prices and trade-policy uncertainty as considerable risks. For individual people in Switzerland this can become noticeable through jobs, prices, mortgage rates or the returns on pension provision. Preparedness therefore also means keeping public finances, the energy supply and access to international markets robust.
Crime: The Data Show No Uniform Picture
The claim that crime is rising "in Europe" is statistically too coarse. For 2024, Eurostat reports declines in police-recorded property offences in the EU: thefts fell by 2.0 percent compared with the previous year, robbery by 4.0 percent and burglaries by 2.6 percent. At the same time, recorded sexual offences continued to rise, and the number of intentional homicides increased by 1.4 percent.
Such figures demand caution. Laws, reporting behaviour and police recording differ from country to country. A rise in recorded sexual offences can also be connected with amended criminal provisions, better recording or a higher reporting rate. Nevertheless, the victims and their need for protection remain real.
In Switzerland, the number of offences recorded under the Criminal Code fell by 1.5 percent in 2025 to 554,963. At the same time, serious violent offences rose by 8.1 percent. Of 55 completed homicides, according to the Federal Statistical Office, 61.8 percent occurred in the domestic sphere. The consequence is clear: fewer property offences must not lead to violence prevention, victim protection and intervention in cases of domestic violence being taken less seriously.
What Switzerland Can Learn
The Swiss debate benefits when it assesses security, the economy and crime separately. Europe is under real pressure. But it follows neither that political parties or individual governments automatically represent a stability risk, nor that every problem has the same cause.
For Switzerland, resilience is a better yardstick than rhetoric of decline: protect critical infrastructure, know economic dependencies, fight violence in a targeted way and strengthen democratic institutions. That is less spectacular than a crisis diagnosis – but more effective in the everyday life of households, companies and authorities.
