Solidarity with the young ones. Interview with Pascal Couchepin

By Simone Achermann

No society will survive in the long term without a sense of solidarity. Because you can only continue to develop if you believe in a common goal. Nevertheless, the existing social contracts have to be redefined: in future, it is not only the young who should demonstrate solidarity towards old people, but the other way round as well, says Pascal Couchepin, former member of the Swiss Federal Council.

Solidarity is a buzzword. What social role does it actually still have today?

No less a role than in the past: without a certain degree of solidarity, our society has no future. People’s attitude is crucial to the success of any project, whether you are forming a company or conserving a nation’s prosperity. And you need the feeling that people belong together and are pursuing the same goal. Otherwise it is impossible to make progress. Let’s take the EU as an example: in reality, there is no danger that Europe will fall apart over the crisis. However, because EU citizens don’t have enough faith in their shared goal, fear dominates people’s minds. That is having a paralysing effect on Europe’s development.

What can be done about it?

The politicians have to communicate more transparently. One reason for the lack of trust in the EU lies in the fact that people were promised too much and are disappointed accordingly. It should have been made clear from the outset that there would be problems and that some states would pay for it. The south’s debts came as no surprise to the governments of the northern EU nations. Everyone knew, but they made the mistake of failing to tell the people. Apart from the crisis and the still-immature European sense of identity, however, the EU is actually a product of great solidarity. Its main goal is to preserve peace. And never before in their history have the nations of Europe coexisted peacefully for such a long time. That is an incredible achievement.

However, this very goal is increasingly being forgotten in view of the Euro crisis.

Although the preservation of peace isn’t getting as much attention as it should be, it is undisputed. You have to remember that the EU is still very young. It is currently experiencing its first crisis, and by the time the next one comes it will survive with no major loss of identity. That probably even applies to the current one. People are outraged, some of them about the austerity measures required, others about the amount of the bailouts received by the indebted countries. At the same time, however, the election results in Greece show that the moderates win even when the mood is highly inflamed. That means, people are furious, but all the same they know there will be too much at stake if no compromises are made.

And what about solidarity at the national level?

Let’s take Switzerland as an example. We are a country with an extremely high level of solidarity. Yet our solidarity suffers greatly from the fact that people believe it is abused. So the first goal has to be to prevent abuses. That was done in exemplary fashion with the invalidity pension: there are far stricter controls now on who receives it. As a result, the absolute number of invalidity pensioners has fallen – and solidarity with them has risen. In general, it can be said that the level of solidarity depends heavily on the control of the social system. If there are too many opportunities for abuse, people are no longer willing to support the system. That also applies to solidarity with old people. Poverty in old age is considered to be more or less under control in Switzerland. Nevertheless, people want to offer more and more extra benefits. That doesn’t make sense. Here’s one alternative: you have to apply for it and only those who can prove that their budget falls genuinely short should receive more benefits. Solidarity-based payments would still be offered with this model, but not to everyone, only the “deserving” cases. That demands more individual responsibility from the recipient and at the same time ensures that taxpayers will understand better and be more supportive.

To continue with the subject of solidarity between old and young: is the intergenerational contract still viable with an increasingly aging population?

It actually becomes much more important as a result of the demographic shift. Yet the redistribution of money between old and young urgently needs restructuring to deal with the altered situation. The first and simplest measure is to reduce the number of old people by raising the pension age. This proposal is meeting with dogged resistance, but only because it has not been explained in simple enough terms. For example: “You have CHF 100,000 available. Now, you can have the money divided up over either 17 or 22 years. With the first option you have to work longer, but you will receive more pension per month, with the second you will retire earlier, but will draw less pension every month”. Anyone can see the sense of that. A second approach is not just to strengthen the solidarity of the young people with the old, but the other way round as well. One way to do this would be restructuring the redistribution: it won’t just be the youngsters giving the old something out of their wages any more, but the old giving the young a few francs out of their pension as well.

The problem is just: how can measures favouring the young be put through when the voting public is getting older and older?

There is a problem with the young voters as well. The Swiss proposal in 2010 to adjust the conversion rate, with the aim of paying out pensions in smaller portions distributed over more years to take account of the population's increased longevity, was rejected by 71 percent of the population. That wasn’t just the decision of the older voters. The reason was that people didn’t understand the idea properly. It is the Federal Government’s task to find simple explanations and create transparency. Far too little is done in that regard. The example of the 100,000 francs gives a very clear illustration, but I’ve never heard a politician mention it.

Let’s move on from old and young to poor and rich: to what extent does the gap between incomes have a destabilising effect on society?

It doesn’t have a major impact on Switzerland, because there isn’t a very big pay differential here – apart from the small number of excessive salaries that destroy what is actually an effective system. They distort the figures and make a small real income gap into a big one in the eyes of the population, annoying people unnecessarily. However, a lot of the people who earned disproportionately high salaries have now lost their jobs because of the financial crisis. And in general, too, the realisation has dawned that it is not necessary to pay these high salaries to attract good workers. It wasn’t a natural market development, as is frequently claimed, but a small group of people commandeering wealth. I don’t believe that will be on the cards again any time soon. The crisis probably has made our society a bit more sensible, which is a good thing.

What role does the economy play in preserving the solidarity of tomorrow?

The economy has the same task all over the world: to secure profits. Stable conditions are crucial for that, in other words solid social conditions and good educational opportunities. The economy can’t ignore that. In Switzerland, it performs its role in exemplary fashion. That can be seen from the pension funds, good apprenticeships and a certain reluctance to create mass redundancies.

You previously put in a plea for more personal responsibility by pensioners. What do you think of Prime Minister Cameron’s “Big Society” programme: do we all have to depend more on neighbourly support in the face of the crisis?

I have a certain sympathy with this attitude. Solidarity is not just a task for the state but also for the people. And it shouldn’t just manifest itself in material goods, but in actions as well; concrete neighbourhood support for instance. A pilot programme in St. Gallen canton shows an example of how to take a different approach to solidarity among citizens. The aim of the project is to build up a kind of savings bank for voluntary services. People who do voluntary work receive an account where they can enter the hours they invested on behalf of the community. If they themselves are in need one day, they will receive credits for this time. That is a very useful principle. It would be good if the Swiss Red Cross, for example, were to carry out a similar project across the whole of Switzerland. After all, its task is to preserve solidarity. However, the state can only devolve a certain share of responsibility to the population. The Big Society was unsuccessful in the UK because people saw it as just an excuse for delegating government responsibility so as to make huge savings. But also because England has a different culture of solidarity.

What distinguishes it from ours?

The French author Emmanuel Todd classifies various types of society according to their different laws of inheritance. His rationale is that a country’s or region’s inheritance system shapes what citizens expect of the state and of their fellow citizens – and therefore also shapes the solidarity culture of a country, if we push the idea a bit further. In Switzerland, everyone expects to inherit something from his or her parents, however little it may be. Take inheriting a farm as an example: in Valais in Switzerland, the property is distributed to the heirs in exact equal shares, that means the farm and also the land are fragmented accordingly. If one member of the family doesn’t receive exactly the same amount, it spells the end of brotherhood. In other regions of Switzerland, although only the eldest or the youngest son gets the farm, the others are entitled to the rest of the estate. In England, however, the father can will his estate to whomever he wants, regardless of whether the legatee is a family member, without necessarily causing rows. I had an English professor who told me about her rich grandfather, who left his entire fortune to a cousin. I was outraged. She, however, was grateful to have received a good education and upbringing and had not expected to inherit either money or land on top of that. The law of inheritance shapes the attitude of the English: although there is much greater inequality there than in Switzerland, it is more easily accepted, because people know that each person is responsible for his or her own fate. However, that also implies that there’s little room in English society for neighbourhood support, for a "Big Society".

And what solidary systems will continue to work in the future?

It’s not possible to develop a generally applicable theory of solidarity. Every country has a different attitude to it. However, it is important for everyone to realise that some solidarity is essential.

Pascal Couchepin is a former member of the Swiss Federal Council. During his period of office from 1998 to 2009, he headed the Federal Department of Economic Affairs and the Federal Department of Home Affairs. In the years 2003 and 2008 he was President of the Confederation. Before his election to the Federal Council, Couchepin was a member of several Boards of Directors and President of the Schweizerische Multiple Sklerose Gesellschaft (Swiss Multiple Sclerosis Society). He also worked with a variety of organisations for the disabled.