{"id":36984,"date":"2026-03-23T09:22:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T09:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/36984\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T09:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T09:22:14","slug":"survey-swiss-question-the-countrys-defence-capabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/36984\/","title":{"rendered":"Survey: Swiss question the country&#8217;s defence capabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <img src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/8a55252a0562cb1620443188581867dffa3c8d02-91140485.jpg\" width=\"1400\" height=\"1050\" alt=\"Swiss doubt the country's defence capabilities, survey\" loading=\"eager\" decoding=\"sync\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                Over three-quarters of respondents doubt the Swiss authorities are sufficiently prepared for conventional and hybrid threats.            <\/p>\n<p>            Keystone-SDA        <\/p>\n<p>        Most people in Switzerland feel safe, but many doubt the country\u2019s defence readiness, a survey published on Monday shows.\n<\/p>\n<p>            Listen to the article        <\/p>\n<p>            Listening the article        <\/p>\n<p>                Toggle language selector            <\/p>\n<p>                            English (US)                        <\/p>\n<p>                            English (British)                        <\/p>\n<p>            Generated with artificial intelligence.        <\/p>\n<p>        This content was published on    <\/p>\n<p>        March 23, 2026 &#8211; 09:28\n<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.swissinfo.ch\/eng\/latest-news\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox<\/a><\/p>\n<p>More than three-quarters of the people who took part in the survey carried out by the Sotomo research institute, known as the \u201cOpportunity Barometer\u201d, doubt the federal government is sufficiently prepared for conventional and hybrid threats.<\/p>\n<p>Most people would like the army\u2019s budget to be increased to 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030, according to the think tank Strategiedialog21, a non-partisan Swiss foundation set up in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>\n    More<\/p>\n<p>    <img src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774257734_848_682937005_highres.jpg\" width=\"1300\" height=\"867\" alt=\"Swiss Army soldiers during a combat exercise with a mortar at the Hinterrhein military training area.\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"auto\"\/><\/p>\n<p>        More    <\/p>\n<p>        Swiss Politics\n        <\/p>\n<p>        Why Switzerland is struggling with its national defence\u00a0\u00a0    <\/p>\n<p class=\"teaser-wide-card__excerpt\">\n<p>                        This content was published on                    <\/p>\n<p>                        Feb 26, 2026                    <\/p>\n<p>                Switzerland\u2019s neighbours increasingly see the country\u00a0as\u00a0a potential weak link in\u00a0European security.\u00a0But at home defence\u00a0is hardly a priority on the political agenda.\u00a0            <\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"teaser-wide-card__link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.swissinfo.ch\/eng\/swiss-politics\/why-switzerland-is-struggling-with-its-national-defence\/90988909\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><\/p>\n<p>            Read more: Why Switzerland is struggling with its national defence\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\n    <\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the current context, a rigid interpretation of neutrality is being challenged, it said. More than two-thirds of respondents would like closer security cooperation with neighbouring European states. A majority would also like stronger cooperation with NATO.<\/p>\n<p>Proximity with European values<\/p>\n<p>More than four in five respondents say they identify with the values of western, central and northern Europe, the survey showed. Outside Europe, only Australia exceeds a 50% alignment. Just 44% of respondents feel there is a \u201cfairly large\u201d correspondence with US core values.<\/p>\n<p>\n    More<\/p>\n<p>    <img src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/419143748_highres_d8b769.jpg\" width=\"1300\" height=\"867\" alt=\"Members of the Swiss Armed Forces\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"auto\"\/><\/p>\n<p>        More    <\/p>\n<p>        Swiss Politics\n        <\/p>\n<p>        Seven weaknesses in \u2018Fortress Switzerland\u2019    <\/p>\n<p class=\"teaser-wide-card__excerpt\">\n<p>                        This content was published on                    <\/p>\n<p>                        Feb 19, 2025                    <\/p>\n<p>                The Swiss Armed Forces are facing considerable challenges. A look at seven problems that the next defence minister will have to address.            <\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"teaser-wide-card__link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.swissinfo.ch\/eng\/swiss-politics\/seven-weaknesses-in-fortress-switzerland\/88890711\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><\/p>\n<p>            Read more: Seven weaknesses in \u2018Fortress Switzerland\u2019<br \/>\n    <\/a><\/p>\n<p>The survey concludes that the Swiss population is not in crisis. Instead, it portrays a country assessing its situation with a sense of \u201clucidity\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>For the sixth edition of the \u2018Opportunity Barometer\u2019, 5,249 people in Switzerland were questioned between November 18 and December 15. The results are considered highly representative of the resident population, say Sotomo.<\/p>\n<p>Adapted from Italian by AI\/sb<\/p>\n<p>                How we work\u00a0            <\/p>\n<p>We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.<\/p>\n<p>If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.swissinfo.ch\/eng\/foreign-affairs\/survey-swiss-question-the-countrys-defence-capabilities\/mailto:english@swissinfo.ch\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">english@swissinfo.ch<\/a><\/p>\n<p>        Articles in this story    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over three-quarters of respondents doubt the Swiss authorities are sufficiently prepared for conventional and hybrid threats. Keystone-SDA Most&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[101,301,326,9095,21758,100,1456,103,3620,41,17,21313],"class_list":["post-36984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-article","tag-beat-foreign-affairs","tag-beat-swiss-politics","tag-defence","tag-international-military-intervention","tag-latest-news","tag-politics-general","tag-production-type-deepl-autotranslation","tag-survey","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland","tag-user-need-update-me"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116277762094406655","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}