BERN. Four sets of federal rules take effect on Sunday 1 November. None of them will change the price of bread this morning. All of them change a document, a database or a farm gate that people in Switzerland actually use: the passport counter, the airline booking page, police cooperation inside Schengen, and the movement of cattle.
What airlines will have to send
Airlines must submit detailed passenger data to a national Passenger Information Unit. The ordinance sets the formats and the deadlines. The point, as the government describes it, is the fight against terrorism and serious crime. Passengers are to be told, before they book, that the data will be collected. The rule puts into practice the Air Passenger Data Act already passed by parliament, and it is written to sit inside Swiss data protection law rather than beside it. The federal police, Fedpol, are the home of the new unit.
A second ordinance spells out Switzerland’s piece of the Schengen Information System and the job of the SIRENE bureau, the national contact point that sits inside Fedpol. It sets the procedure by which Swiss authorities manage and exchange personal data in international police cooperation. Bern’s stated aims are internal security, more effective border checks, and a standard way of handling data so that cooperation with other Schengen states does not depend on local habit. This is Switzerland implementing an obligation it has already accepted, not a new vote on whether to remain in Schengen.
The provisional passport gets a new name
Identity documents change in language and in the product on the counter. From Sunday the “provisional passport” is an “emergency passport”, a rename meant to make the document’s purpose obvious. Identity cards will be offered, explicitly, in two versions: with a chip and without one. The collection of biometric data, including fingerprints, for passports and for chipped identity cards is clarified and aligned with international standards. Fees have been revised to reflect the work and the technology. Anyone applying for a new Swiss passport or identity card is in the group this touches. Existing documents are not cancelled by the calendar.
Two labels left for a cattle disease
On farms, the veterinary office is closing a two-year transition on bovine viral diarrhoea, BVD. The old three-way classification of holdings is gone. From Sunday a herd is either “BVD-free” or it is not. Herds that are free can move animals without the old restrictions. Herds that are not stay restricted. The Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office says more than 99 per cent of cattle holdings are already free of the virus, and that the aim is eradication rather than permanent management.
Sunday is when these texts start to apply. The politics of them was settled earlier. The 1 September list was the last time a quiet date changed the rulebook in this way: a prosecutor’s office, a pay floor, a data rule. November’s list is passports, passenger lists, a police database and a disease the country says it is close to ending. For travellers, the practical line is the one the ordinance puts on the booking page: you will be told, before you buy the ticket, that the passenger data is being collected.