Evangelical People's Party

Evangelical People's Party

Establishment date:	May 10, 1919
Place of foundation:	Brugg
Ideology:	Christian democracy , values conservatism, social conservatism
Presidium:	Marianne Streiff-Feller
Vice Presidium:	François Bachmann Nik Gugger
Secretary General:	Roman Rutz
Members:	4,600 (as of 2015)
Proportion of women:	in the National Council: 66.6%, in the party 42% (as of 2019)
Average age:	51 (as of 2019)
Share of voters:	2.1% (as of: National Council elections 2019)
National Council:	3/200
Council of States:	0/46
Fraction (BV):	Middle group. CVP-EVP-BDP.
Cantonal parliaments:	36/2609 (As of November 2019)
Cantonal Governments:	0/154 (As of November 2019)
Party structure:	18 cantonal parties
Groupings:	* jevp
European party:	European Christian Political Movement
Website:	www.evppev.ch

The Evangelical People's Party of Switzerland ( French Parti Evangelique Suisse , Italian Partito Evangelico Svizzero ) is a Christian Swiss party and counts itself to the political center .

In the Swiss parliamentary elections in 2019 , the EPP won 0.2 percentage points of the vote and an additional seat, so that it now has three national council mandates again. Since 2011 the EPP and the CVP have formed a joint political group .

Party Sociology and Positions

Around 51 percent of the members come from free churches and 46.5 percent from the Reformed regional church . The other members belong to the United Methodist Church and, in some cases, to the Roman Catholic Church .

When it comes to issues of redistribution and education, as well as environmental issues, immigration and asylum policy, the EPP is more on the left ; when it comes to issues such as euthanasia , abortion or the partnership law , it is more conservative . The EPP represents positions of the political center on economic and financial issues.

Organization and elected officials

The EPP has 18 cantonal sections and is represented in ten cantonal parliaments (as of March 2020). In May 2004, the first purely French-speaking cantonal party was founded in Vaud . Since August 2004 there has also been a young party under the name * jevp , the co-presidency is shared by Uriel Seibert and Dominic Täubert.

The EPP has three seats in the National Council through Marianne Streiff-Feller , Lilian Studer and Nik Gugger . You have joined the middle group CVP-EVP-BDP .

Marianne Streiff-Feller has been party president since 2014. Roman Rutz has been Secretary General since 2018. The party is a member of the party association European Christian Political Movement .

history

On March 4, 1917, the “Protestant Christian Party” was founded in the Free Church of Uster , and in 1918 the “Political Association of Christian Citizens” in Bern . On the initiative of the Bernese, the Evangelical People's Party of Switzerland was founded in Brugg before the National Council elections in 1919 . In these elections, the EPP managed to win a seat in the National Council in the canton of Zurich. The EPP retained this seat until it temporarily resigned from the national parliament in 1939. Four years later it managed to regain it, winning a second seat in 1959 and a third seat in 1963. This number of three seats remained unchanged until the EPP lost seats in 1995 had to, which she was able to compensate for in the 1999 elections with an additional mandate in the canton of Aargau for the next eight years.

From 1951, the EPP formed a parliamentary group in the National Council with the Democrats , then between 1971 and 1979 with the Liberal Party , then from 1979 until its dissolution in 1999 with the Landesring der Independees . Between 2003 and 2007 there was a parliamentary group of the three EPP representatives with the two national councils of the evangelical-conservative EDU . For the next four years, the EPP joined forces with the Green Liberals and the CVP to form a common group . Since the Green Liberals achieved parliamentary strength alone in 2011, the CVP and EPP have formed a joint group of the political center in 2011.

At the end of 1989 EPP Switzerland had around 4,000 members with an average age of just over 50 years. Of these, 85 percent belonged to the Reformed Church , 6 percent to the Methodist Church , followed by the Chrischona congregations and the Free Evangelical congregations . More than five percent of the members were self-employed at the time. More than 40 percent of all members of EPP Switzerland lived in the canton of Zurich in 1989, followed by Bern with more than 20 percent. The average length of membership at this point in time was 13 years.

Zurich

As early as 1917, the “Protestant Christian Party” won two cantonal council mandates . In 1922, the EPP sent the first representative to the Great City Council of Zurich, in which it was represented without interruption from 1954 to 2014. It achieved the highest share of the vote in the 1970s with 8.3% votes and the election of Ruedi Aeschbacher to the city council of Zurich in 1978. Later, the share of the vote fluctuated between three and six percent, until it narrowly failed in 2014 in the city of Zurich because of the five percent hurdle that was introduced in the meantime . The number of mandates in the Cantonal Council has also halved since the mid-1970s and early 1980s. In the local elections in 2018 , thanks to a list connection with the BDP , the EPP finally succeeded in re-entering the city parliament, where it won four seats.

Election results

National Council

Share of voters in the EPP since 1919 (excluding 1939 )

8th%

6%

4%

2%

0%

year	%	Seats	elected
1919	0.81%	1	Hans Hoppeler (ZH)
1922	0.86%	1	Hans Hoppeler (ZH)
1925	0.93%	1	Hans Hoppeler (ZH)
1928	0.70%	1	Hans Hoppeler (ZH)
1931	0.98%	1	Hans Hoppeler (ZH)
1935	0.74%	1	Hans Hoppeler (ZH)
1939	0.93% ¹	0
1943	0.41%	1	Paul Zigerli (ZH)
1947	0.94%	1	Paul Zigerli (ZH)
1951	0.99%	1	Paul Zigerli (ZH)
1955	1.08%	1	Paul Zigerli (ZH)
1959	1.43%	2	Willy Sauser (ZH) Ernst Schmid (ZH)
1963	1.63%	2	Willy Sauser (ZH) Ernst Schmid (ZH)
1967	1.58%	3	Willy Sauser (ZH) Ernst Schmid (ZH) Paul Aebischer (BE)
1971	2.15%	3	Willy Sauser (ZH) Heinrich Schalcher (ZH) Otto Zwygart senior (BE)
1975	1.97%	3	Willy Sauser (ZH) Heinrich Schalcher (ZH) Otto Zwygart senior (BE)
1979	2.22%	3	Heinrich Schalcher (ZH) Hans Oester (ZH) Otto Zwygart senior (BE)
1983	2.08%	3	Hans Oester (ZH) Max Dünki (ZH) Otto Zwygart junior (BE)
1987	1.93%	3	Hans Oester (ZH) Max Dünki (ZH) Otto Zwygart junior (BE)
1991	1.89%	3	Max Dünki (ZH) Ernst Sieber (ZH) Otto Zwygart junior (BE)
1995	1.79%	2	Max Dünki (ZH) Otto Zwygart junior (BE)
1999	1.83%	3	Ruedi Aeschbacher (ZH) Otto Zwygart junior (BE) Heiner Studer (AG)
2003	2.28%	3	Ruedi Aeschbacher (ZH) Walter Donzé (BE) Heiner Studer (AG)
2007	2.45%	2	Ruedi Aeschbacher (ZH) Walter Donzé (BE)
2011	2.00%	2	Maja Ingold (ZH) Marianne Streiff (BE)
2015	1.90%	2	Maja Ingold (ZH) Marianne Streiff (BE)
2019	2.08%	3	Nik Gugger (ZH) Marianne Streiff (BE) Lilian Studer (AG)
¹Meaningfulness limited, as silent voting in 9 cantons

Cantonal parliaments

year	Switzerland National Council	Cantonal parliaments
year	Switzerland National Council	Canton Zurich ZH	Canton Bern BE	Canton lucerne LU	Canton of Uri UR	Canton of Schwyz SZ	Canton of Obwalden OW	Canton of Nidwalden NW	Canton of Glarus GL	Canton of Zug ZG	Canton of Friborg FR	Canton of Solothurn SO	Canton of Basel-Stadt BS	Canton of Basel-Country BL	Canton of Schaffhausen SH	Canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden AR	Canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden AI	Canton of St. Gallen SG	canton of Grisons GR	Kanton Aargau AG	Canton of Thurgau TG	Canton of Ticino TI	Canton of Vaud VD	Canton of Valais VS	Canton of Neuchâtel NE	Canton of Geneva GE	Canton of Jura JU
2007	2.4	5.2		0.5										5.6		*	*					n / A.	0.4
2008					n / A.	n / A.							5.2		2.4			2.3			5.0
2009												1.8								4.5				n / A.	0.7	n / A.
2010			5.9				n / A.	n / A.	n / A.	n / A.									*								n / A.
2011	2.0	3.8		n / A.							0.4			4.7		2.2	*					n / A.
2012					n / A.	n / A.							4.2		2.2			2.2		3.9	4.7		0.6
2013												1.4												n / A.	n / A.	n / A.
2014			6.4				n / A.	n / A.	n / A.	n / A.									*
2015	1.9	4.3		0.2										5.4		2.1	*					n / A.					n / A.
2016					n / A.	0.3					n / A.		3.5		2.4			1.7		4.0	4.9
2017												1.1											0.3	n / A.	n / A.
2018			6.2				n / A.	n / A.	n / A.	n / A.									*							n / A.
2019	2.1	4.2		0.6										4.9		2.6	*					0.2
2020					n / A.	n / A.							...		...			2.3		...	4.8						...
Legend: * - Landsgemeinde or major elections / community assemblies in several / all constituencies; ... - zuk. Elections in the current year; yellow - entry into parliament; n / A. - not started; Election results in percent; Source:

Web links

EPP Switzerland website
Website of * jevp Switzerland
Evangelical People's Party in the archive database of the Swiss Federal Archives

Individual evidence

↑ The Confederation in Brief 2015. (PDF; 14821 kB) (No longer available online.) Swiss Federal Chancellery, February 28, 2014, archived from the original on December 26, 2015 ; accessed on December 21, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2

↑ NZZ, July 11, 2015, page 11.

↑ 100 years of Protestant politics: Planned in Maur, founded in Uster. in: Zürcher Oberländer, March 4, 2017, page 9.

^ Protestant People's Party of Switzerland: Press service of January 3, 1990. Zurich 1990.

↑ NZZ, February 15, 2014.

^ Federal Statistical Office: Cantonal parliamentary elections: party strengths with allocation of mixed lists to the parties

[1] The Confederation in Brief 2015. (PDF; 14821 kB) (No longer available online.) Swiss Federal Chancellery, February 28, 2014, archived from the original on December 26, 2015 ; accessed on December 21, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2

[2] NZZ, July 11, 2015, page 11.

[3] 100 years of Protestant politics: Planned in Maur, founded in Uster. in: Zürcher Oberländer, March 4, 2017, page 9.

[4] Protestant People's Party of Switzerland: Press service of January 3, 1990. Zurich 1990.

[5] NZZ, February 15, 2014.

[6] Federal Statistical Office: Cantonal parliamentary elections: party strengths with allocation of mixed lists to the parties