BERN. The SVP’s succession drama has found its second actor. At 11 am on Wednesday, Rémy Wyssmann stood before the cameras in Solothurn and declared himself a candidate for the Federal Council, describing himself as a state-critical lawyer who wants to bring the perspective of the cantons into the federal government. A member of the National Council for barely three years, he has presided over the SVP of canton Solothurn since 2024 and earns his living as an independent attorney and notary.
His entry changes the arithmetic of a race that was threatening to become a coronation by default. Until Wednesday, Céline Amaudruz was the only declared candidate. The 47-year-old Geneva National Councillor, fifteen years in parliament and a decade as vice-president of the national party, launched her bid at a Geneva hotel on 15 October and has since gathered the open backing of the French-speaking party, including Vaud’s Yvan Pahud, who weighed a run of his own and chose to support her instead.
The week of the refusals
Wyssmann’s candidacy closes a brutal stretch of rejections for the selection committee. Pascal Schmid, the party’s head of asylum policy and the favourite of the Blocher wing, said no on Tuesday. Zurich government councillor Natalie Rickli, perhaps the only figure who could have united the party’s factions instantly, announced on Instagram on Monday that she would stay in Zurich, where she is fighting her own re-election campaign. Before her, St. Gallen senator Esther Friedli, Solothurn’s Christian Imark, citing two small children who need their father, and Lucerne’s Franz Grüter all declined.
Thomas Aeschi, the parliamentary group president, has promised that the ticket presented to the United Federal Assembly on 9 December will contain at least two names, and has not ruled out three, as in 2015 when Parmelin prevailed over Norman Gobbi and Aeschi himself. Thomas Matter and Jean-Pierre Gallati are still said to be weighing their options. They have until noon on Friday, 23 October, when the window for cantonal parties to submit names to the nomination committee closes.
The road to 9 December
From here the procedure is fixed. The nomination committee hears the candidates and delivers a proposal to the parliamentary group executive by 13 November. The group itself selects the official ticket on 20 November, and the election in the United Federal Assembly follows on 9 December. Parmelin, who leaves office at the end of the year, will watch it all from the Department of Economic Affairs he has run since 2019.
The open question is no longer whether the SVP can field a ticket, but whether it can field a winning one. Amaudruz keeps the seat French-speaking, as party geography demands, but her hard-line profile complicates the search for votes beyond the SVP group. Wyssmann is a German speaker from a small canton, fresh to the federal stage, and untested in the horse-trading of a Federal Council election. The other parties have begun to count the days to 9 December with unusual interest.