Notes from the Federal Palace Are you ready for a happy retirement abroad? The FDFA is here to provide assistance and support with planning and preparing for a relaxing retirement. However, the decisions surrounding retirement require a lot of thought. What is this project all about? “Aging abroad” is a preventative project, which aims to raise awareness among its target audience of the challenges involved in retiring abroad and to provide practical information in a variety of different forms. It is also designed to inform consular offices and advise them on their role and their abilities. Current situation More and more often, a large number of Swiss people are opting, for a variety of reasons, to spend their retirement abroad instead of in Switzerland. There are certainly plenty of reasons for that. One of the perennial favourites is to spend winter somewhere with better weather. Swiss people who wish to spend their retirement abroad are not always well informed. Many of them are unaware of the challenges and issues they may face abroad. A great many Swiss people fail to take their own responsibilities seriously and are often under-prepared. Birth of the project The campaign launched by the Consular Directorate originated from a proposal made by our former Head of Mission in Thailand, Helene Budliger Artieda, who wanted to take a proactive approach to the issue before any political mandate was handed down. In order to get a more specific understanding of the problems, in-depth studies and a survey were conducted with the representations of 25 countries, which revealed that the main topics were retirement planning, insurance and questions about specialised services such as health insurance, old age and survivors’ insurance and pension funds. Other subjects included general information about finances, retirement homes, polSpielerische Pause im Hof der familiären Schweizerschule in Singapur. “Aging abroad”: the Consular Directorate of the FDFA helps seniors abroad Individual responsibility The framework conditions are defined first and foremost by the Swiss Abroad Act (SAA), which came into force on 26 September 2014. Article 5 stipulates the following on individual responsibility: “Every individual shall exercise personal responsibility when planning or undertaking a stay abroad or when working abroad.” The president of the Swiss Confederation, Ignazio Cassis, imposed the requirement for all Swiss citizens to exercise personal responsibility and, with that in mind, personal responsibility was defined as the objective for the Consular Directorate for 2022. The “Aging abroad” project will make a major contribution towards encouraging people to take personal responsibility and drawing the attention of the community to this responsibility when planning their retirement or when they are already abroad. Enjoying retirement abroad: wishful thinking for many Swiss. Photo: iStock 24 Swiss Review / January 2023 / No.1
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