When the same voices that make a living out of ’openness« tell the people that they are afraid of growing up, you have to start by checking who is speaking - and for whom. Under the guise of »anti-fragility’, Raymond Loretan recycles a well-oiled rhetoric: making direct democracy feel guilty, making transfers of sovereignty sacrosanct and making any resistance seem like a national pathology. It's a brave statement. Above all, it is comfortable. Behind the buzzwords and think tank references, there is one constant: explaining to citizens that deciding for themselves is now a risk. It is precisely this moral inversion that needs to be dismantled, point by point.
Raymond Loretan, a well-established figure in the institutional microcosm, writes in Le Matin Dimanche an opinion piece that claims to be bold, modern and «anti-fragile». In reality, it recycles the most classic rhetoric of Swiss Euro-integrationism: making direct democracy feel guilty, sacralising unconditional openness and disqualifying all resistance as a childish fear of the world.
Behind the intellectual veneer, the argument is fragile, biased and deeply ideological.
1. Anti-fragility’: a clever word to avoid in-depth debate
Raymond Loretan invokes ’antifragility« to assert that Switzerland has always prospered thanks to external shocks. Problem:
⮕ anti-fragility does not imply blind acceptance of constraints, but the ability to filter them, master them and refuse them when they become systemic.
But what does it actually propose?
- increased dependence on the EU,
- normative dilution,
- a weakening of sovereign decision-making mechanisms.
This is not antifragility.
⮕ It's organised vulnerability, This is masked by a fashionable vocabulary directly inspired by management literature... and think tanks.
The Avenir Suisse book is not a revelation: it is a neoliberal catechism financed by the same business circles that benefit from free movement without safeguards.
2. SSR: the blackmail of cohesion
To assert that criticising or reforming the SSR would be tantamount to «undermining national cohesion» is intellectual blackmail.
Swiss cohesion was not born of an audiovisual monopoly financed by a compulsory licence fee.
It is based on :
- real federalism,
- local responsibility,
- pluralism,
- and confidence in the citizen.
⮕ Defending a public service reformed, proportionate and responsible, It's not about destroying it.
It means refusing to let it turn into a subsidised ideological actor, increasingly removed from its balancing role.
To equate any criticism with an attack on national unity is unworthy of a healthy democratic debate.
3. Immigration: caricature as a method
The 10 million initiative has been reduced to postcard nostalgia. This is false - and dishonest.
The real debate is about :
- the absorption capacity of the region,
- pressure on infrastructure,
- accommodation,
- salaries,
- social cohesion.
⮕ To say that any limit is a fear of the world, is to reject the very principle of political responsibility.
Immigration controlled involves sovereign choices, It is not a headlong rush dictated by the immediate needs of certain economic sectors.
4. Bilaterals III: the novlanguage of submission
To describe the Bilaterals III as an ’act of economic sovereignty« is a bit of a misnomer. Orwellian novlanguage.
Sovereignty is not :
- automatically take over foreign law,
- accept an asymmetrical dispute settlement mechanism,
- reduce direct democracy to an adjustment variable.
⮕ Market access is not sovereignty.
⮕ The ability to say no, yes.
Presenting any opposition as an «anti-European» caricature carefully avoids responding to specific legal and institutional criticisms.
5. The real refusal to question
Raymond Loretan concludes that the danger lies in an «inner refusal to question ourselves».
The reality is exactly the opposite.
⮕ Those who refuse to debate are those who present every transfer of powers as inevitable.
⮕ Those who dismiss all resistance as archaic are those who fear the popular verdict.
Switzerland is not fragile.
It is lucid.
Conclusion - Switzerland is not an ideological laboratory
Switzerland has never grown by giving up its decision-making mechanisms.
She grew up in selecting what it accepts, and above all what she refuses.
Political maturity does not mean automatic alignment.
This is the tempo control, rules and limits.
What threatens Switzerland today is not the world, nor chaos, nor change.
⮕ It's the confiscation of debate by an elite that thinks it's enlightened because it sits on all the boards of directors.
Switzerland is not afraid to grow.
It simply refuses to disappear under the guise of modernity.
By dint of explaining to the people that they are afraid of growing up, Raymond Loretan ends up revealing what really frightens him: an adult Switzerland that makes decisions without asking permission from boards of directors, think tanks... or Brussels.
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