Notes from the Federal Palace INTERVIEW: MARC LETTAU Swiss people living abroad like to see themselves as ambassadors for Switzerland. As an official ambassador yourself, you should know. Is this self-perception accurate? It’s certainly true that when you live abroad, you become a walking advertisement for Switzerland. Nevertheless, there is also a place for questioning to some degree this self-construed image so prevalent among the “Fifth Switzerland”. In what sense? Every Swiss Abroad leaves behind positive and negative impressions, so everyone shares the responsibility of how Swiss are perceived. This doesn’t just apply to those living abroad, however, but also to the many Swiss who travel the world. Whether or not all of them really act as ambassadors is another matter, but we can definitely say that every Swiss Abroad has the potential, at least, to become one. Almost 800,000 Swiss live abroad. Can Switzerland – or more precisely your Consular Directorate – still manage to address individual cases and concerns? Swiss living abroad are usually well acquainted with the ins and outs of their country of residence and can manage on their own. For them, our diplomatic representations are a kind of community. More often, it is Swiss travelling abroad who ask us for help and consular protection. Some of these cases are difficult and solving them requires enormous effort. Such as the case of Natallia Hersche, the Swiss woman arrested in Belarus in 2020? Switzerland did a great deal to secure her release – at least that’s how it looked from the outside. It was indeed a highly complex, politically charged case that attracted enormous media attention. Natallia Hersche is a dual “Always focused on people and their circumstances” Who addresses the pressing concerns of the “Fifth Switzerland”? Who comes to the aid of Swiss travellers who find themselves in an emergency situation abroad? Both these matters fall within the remit of the Consular Directorate (CD) at the Department of Foreign Affairs. Its director, Ambassador Johannes Matyassy, describes the challenge of having to constantly deal with new and extremely difficult problems. A native of Berne, diplomat Johannes Matyassy has been director of the Consular Directorate of the FDFA since 2018. Matyassy’s previous positions included Swiss ambassador to Argentina and subsequently head of the Asia and Pacific Division in the FDFA. As CEO of Presence Switzerland, the official platform of Switzerland worldwide, Matyassy also focused on Switzerland’s activities abroad. He is retiring at the beginning of 2023. Photos: Danielle Liniger aged to organise their own return journey, but we soon realised that not all of them could do it alone. This phenomenally largescale operation can hardly be compared with other very complex cases. When rescuing abducted children or bringing young people home from a jihadist camp, for example, things remain extremely tense for months – sometimes years. Switzerland provides assistance to its citizens abroad in emergency situations. But what does that mean for binational families, where the father might be Swiss, the mother of foreign nationality, the children dual citizens? That’s a very important question which we also had to answer during the pandemic repatriation campaign. At that time, we took a pragmatic approach. You can’t tear famiSwiss-Belarusian citizen. First of all, we had to get the Belarusian authorities to recognise that. Only then could we provide assistance to Natallia Hersche. Our ambassador in Minsk visited her in prison countless times. Furthermore, there were intense negotiations between Switzerland and Belarus on a political level. In the end, the main thing was that we left no stone unturned – but there was no “deal” made with the regime in Minsk. Then we had the opposite of an isolated case when during the coronavirus pandemic, 4,200 people were flown back to Switzerland on 35 flights. We’re talking about the largest repatriation campaign in the history of Switzerland! At first, we called on people to take responsibility for themselves. Many actually man24
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