Tenants get some good news today: lower rents

The Federal Housing Administration (BWO) has announced Monday morning it is lowering its reference interest rate from the current 1.75 to 1.50 percent on Monday.

This means that many tenants can now apply to have their rent reduced — as long as it is based on the interest rate of 1.75 percent or higher.

In total, rental prices could fall by up to 2.91 percent, though, given the inflation-driven increase in their overall administrative costs, landlords could legally offer a lesser reduction. 

READ ALSO: What is Switzerland’s ‘rent calculator’ and how can it help you? 

Municipalities are being trained to detect fake EU passports

An increasing number of people from third countries — several thousand each year — are using fake EU passports to search for work in Switzerland, according to an investigation conducted by the Tribune de Genève (TDG) newspaper.

The weak link, the TDG reported on Sunday, is that some municipal employees, who are charged with verifying whether applicants’ passports are genuine, can’t always spot fakes, summarily issuing work permits to applicants.

Therefore, the Interregional Police Training Center  (CIFPol), is stepping up its training — currently in over 2,000 municipalities — teaching city officials in charge of work permits to accurately distinguish between fake and real EU passports.

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Switzerland remains ‘firmly’ in Ukraine’s corner

Swiss government is anything but neutral regarding an altercation that took place on Friday between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, which ended with the Ukrainian president being thrown out of the White House.

Swiss president Karin Keller-Sutter took to X (formerly Twitter) to reaffirm the country’s solidarity with the war-torn nation:

Switzerland remains firmly committed to supporting a just and lasting peace, while condemning Russia’s aggression against a sovereign state. #Ukraine

— Karin Keller-Sutter (@keller_sutter) March 1, 2025

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Self-driving cars are now authorised on Swiss roads

From March 1st, automated vehicles are legal on Switzerland’s roads; this means that drivers are allowed to let go of the steering wheel and no longer have to constantly monitor the traffic around them.

With this new technology, the government hopes to improve road safety and traffic flow.

“Autonomous vehicles, driven by artificial intelligence, aim to eliminate human error, the main cause of road accidents,” said Alexandre Alahi, assistant professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Lausanne (EPFL), and head of the Visual Intelligence for Transportation Laboratory, which conceived and developed the project.

However, the theory still diverges from practice: no car manufacturer has to date applied for approval of such a system in Switzerland.

“For the time being, no one will be able to use it,” said Patrizia Portmann, head of the Road User Regulations department at the Federal Roads Office.

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