Liberal Party of Switzerland

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Liberal Party of Switzerland
Logo of the Liberal Party of Switzerland
Establishment date: 1913

The Liberal Party of Switzerland (LPS) , Parti Libéral Suisse (PLS) in French , Partito Liberale Svizzero (PLS) in Italian , Partida liberala svizra (PLS) in Romansh , was a political party in Switzerland that represented an economically liberal course and in its strongholds was considered a party of the upper middle class . In 2009 it merged at the federal level with the Free Democratic Party of Switzerland to form the FDP, The Liberals . In the canton of Basel-Stadt , the Liberals continue to exist separately as the Liberal Democratic Party .

history

choice % National Council Council of States
1919 3.81%
9/189
2/44
1922 3.95%
10/198
1/44
1925 2.99%
7/198
1/44
1928 2.95%
6/198
1/44
1931 2.85%
6/187
1/44
1935 3.34%
6/187
2/44
1939 1.66% 1
6/187
2/44
1943 3.23%
8/194
2/44
1947 3.18%
7/194
2/44
1951 2.58%
5/196
3/44
1955 2.22%
5/196
3/44
1959 2.33%
5/196
3/44
1963 2.24%
6/200
3/44
1967 2.34%
6/200
3/44
1971 2.19%
6/200
2/44
1975 2.45%
6/200
1/44
1979 2.80%
8/200
3/46
1983 2.82%
8/200
3/46
1987 2.72%
9/200
3/46
1991 3.04%
10/200
3/46
1995 2.67%
7/200
3/46
1999 2.25%
6/200
0/46
2003 2.18%
4/200
0/46
2007 1.84%
4/200
0/46
1Meaningfulness limited, as silent voting in 9 cantons.
Share of voters in the LPS 1919–2007 (excluding 1939 )
8th%
6%
4%
2%
0%

Their origins lie with the liberals or liberal conservatives of the 19th century, who represented strongly federalist positions. These were part of the regeneration movement between 1830 and 1848 and then positioned themselves in the center of the new parliament. In most of the cantons they were absorbed by the Liberals, who founded the Swiss Liberal Democratic Party in 1894 . In the reformed cantons of French-speaking Switzerland ( Geneva , Vaud and Neuchâtel ) and in Basel-Stadt, they remained independent and founded the liberal-democratic parliamentary group in the National Council in 1893, which then had 13 members, and in 1913 the Liberal Party of Switzerland, which at the beginning also included sections in the cantons of Zurich, Schaffhausen, Graubünden, Freiburg and Bern, which, however, were not supposed to survive the First World War. Between 1917 and 1919, the Liberals even had their own Federal Council, Gustave Ador from Geneva .

The party tried to gain a foothold in the cantons of Basel-Landschaft , Bern , Freiburg , Wallis and Zurich in the 1980s and 1990s , but with mixed results. The Basellandschaftliche section dissolved again. The other sections remained meaningless, only in Valais it was able to win two seats in the cantonal parliament. This failure can be attributed to the fact that their right-wing liberal positions were already represented by the FDP in the canton of Zurich and by the SVP in the canton of Bern .

In the Swiss parliamentary elections in 2003 , the Liberals lost their parliamentary seats in Basel-Stadt and Neuchâtel and were therefore only represented in the National Council with two seats each from the cantons of Geneva and Vaud. With that, the Liberals also lost their parliamentary group status ; they joined the FDP parliamentary group .

Merger with the FDP

Due to the positive experience of the LPS and FDP parliamentary group , their party alliance, the Union of Liberals and Liberals , was founded in 2005 . On March 1, 2007, the women's groups of the LPS and FDP merged under the name “ FDP-Women Switzerland - We Liberals ”. In 2008, the liberal National Councilor Martine Brunschwig Graf was elected Vice-Leader of the FDP / LPS parliamentary group in the Federal Assembly. The young liberals merged with the young liberals on April 12, 2008, while the name “ Jungfreisinnige Schweiz ” was retained, in French the new name is: “Jeunes libéraux radicaux suisses”, the Basel young liberals remained independent.

The LPS and FDP declared their merger at a national level on October 25, 2008 at a joint party congress in Bern, and in early 2009 they founded a new Swiss liberal party. The new party bears the names “FDP - Die Liberalen”, “PLR - Les Libéraux-Radicaux”, “PLR - I Liberali”, “PLD - Ils Liberals” for the four language regions . In the cantons of Ticino and Jura , joint free-thinking liberal parties had existed for years (“Partito liberale-radicale cantone Ticino” and “Parti libéral-radical du canton de Jura”). In 2007 and 2008, the Freiburg , Neuchâtel and Valais cantonal parties of the Liberals and Liberals also merged at canton level. The liberal parties of Basel-Stadt, Geneva and Vaud remained in place at the cantonal level for the time being. The merger in the canton of Geneva followed in mid-2011, and in 2012 in Vaud. The Liberal Democratic Party of Basel-Stadt is still politicized as an independent cantonal party under the umbrella of the FDP Switzerland and has once again provided a National Council with Christoph Eymann since 2015 .

President of the LPS

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Swissinfo: Liberal alliance against left and right
  2. ^ Association of FDP women and liberal women , news.ch, December 30, 2007;    Les femmes veulent jouer les marieuses entre les Partis radical et libéral, Le Matin of December 29, 2007.
  3. ^ FDP-Liberal parliamentary group of the Federal Assembly ( Memento from January 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Young liberals and liberals merge,  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.limmattalonline.ch   LimmattalOnline, April 12, 2008.
  5. ^ «A new national party is emerging. FDP and LPS together form the liberal original »  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , FDP media conference, July 15, 2008@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.fdp.ch  
  6. ^ Neuchâtel FDP and Liberals merge , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , April 12, 2008