Promotion of plurilingualism – Federal Council approves evaluation report and recommendations

Bern, 13.03.2015 - At its meeting today, the Federal Council approved the evaluation report "Promotion of plurilingualism" together with the recommendations on plurilingualism policy. While the aims of ensuring that Switzerland's national languages are evenly represented in the Federal Administration have been achieved overall, further action is still needed.

The report highlights developments in the period from 2008 to 2014 and gives an outlook for the period from 2015 to 2019. It was drawn up by the federal delegate for plurilingualism, Nicoletta Mariolini, on the basis of reports from the departments and the Federal Chancellery on their measures and activities.

The data collected on the mother tongue of employees shows that the targets for a balanced representation of languages in the Federal Administration have been achieved overall. The proportion of French-speaking employees has risen and since 2014 has reached 21.6%, i.e. the lower threshold of the target values set out in the Languages Ordinance. The representation of the Italian language community (6.8%) is also within the target values, while Romansh (0.3%) has not yet reached the target values.

The different language communities have not yet achieved a balanced representation in the upper salary classes (34 to 38). At 21.9%, the proportion of French-speaking employees has indeed been slightly above average since 2014. By contrast, the German speakers were clearly over-represented at 72.5% at the expense of the Italian-speaking community, which, at 4.8%, is clearly under-represented.

The report also contains an overview of current measures and information on language representation in the individual departments and administrative units. In this regard, there are still considerable deviations from the target values set out in the Languages Ordinance. The recommendations made by the federal delegate for plurilingualism concern training to promote employee language skills, staff recruitment and general awareness-raising measures, amongst others.


Address for enquiries

Nicoletta Mariolini, Federal Delegate for Plurilingualism
Tel. 058 462 64 35, nicoletta.mariolini@gs-efd.admin.ch



Publisher

The Federal Council
https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start.html

Federal Department of Finance
https://www.efd.admin.ch/efd/en/home.html

https://www.admin.ch/content/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releases.msg-id-56546.html