Evangelical People's Party of Switzerland
The Evangelical People's Party of Switzerland (French Parti Evangelique Suisse, Italian Partito Evangelico Svizzero ) is an Evangelical Christian Swiss party. It belongs to the political center.
The Swiss Parliament elections in 2007, the EPP reached a vote share of 2.4 percent, lost in the National Council a seat and has since been back only two seats. She joined with the Green Liberals and the CVP together into a group. This was based on a strengthening of the political center was headed. Since 2011, the EPP and the CVP form a common fraction, since the Green Liberals have formed their own faction.
Membership base and political positions
Its members describe themselves as devout Christians. About 60 percent come from the Reformed Church, and another 10 percent from the United Methodist Church, the rest from other free churches, but there are also some Catholics. For questions of redistribution and the formation as well as on environmental issues, immigration and asylum policy, the EPP is more left; on issues such as euthanasia, abortion or partnership law is more conservative. In economic and financial policy factual issues, the EPP represents positions of the political center.
Organization and members
The EPP has sixteen cantonal parties and is represented in eleven cantonal parliaments.
The EPP provides two representatives in the National Council, which belong to the Christian Democrats / EPP / glp Group.
Party President since 2014 Marianne Streiff. Secretary-General since 2002, Joel Blunier. The party is a member of the party - union European Christian Political Movement.
In May 2004 the first purely French-speaking cantonal party was founded in Vaud. Since August 2004, the boy EPP exists with the name * jevp, but so far has only a few hundred members. President of the EPP are boys since 2009 Sara Fritz and Roman Rutz.
History
1917 was established in the Free Church Examination the " Protestant - Christian party ," and in 1918 in Bern, the " Political Association of Christian citizens ." On the initiative of the Berne the Evangelical People's Party of Switzerland was founded in Brugg before the national elections of 1919. In these elections, the EPP succeeded in winning a seat in the National Council of the Canton of Zurich. This seat kept the EPP until her temporary retirement from the national parliament in 1939. Four years later, her already the recovery, 1959, she won a second, in 1963 a third seat this number of 3 seats remained unchanged until the EPP in 1995 a seat loss had been made, but she was able to offset already in the elections 1999.
Since 1951, the EPP formed the National Council a common fraction with the Democrats, then 1971-1979 with the Liberal Party, then from 1979 until its dissolution in 1999 with the country's Ring of Independents. Between 2003 and 2007 there was a group of three EPP representatives of the two national councils of the evangelical conservative EDU.
End of 1989, the EPP Switzerland around 4000 members with an average age of just over 50 years. Of these, 85 percent belonged to the Reformed Church, 6 percent for the Methodist Church, followed by the Chrischona communities and the Free Evangelical communities. More than 5 percent of the members were self-employed at this time. More than 40 percent of the EPP members lived Switzerland in the canton of Zurich in 1989, followed by Bern, with more than 20 percent. The average length of membership was 13 years at that time.
Zurich
In 1917 won the " Protestant Christian party " two Cantonal mandates. 1922 sent the EPP the first representatives to the Great Council of the City of Zurich, in which she was represented from 1954 to 2014 without interruption. The peak of voters reached in the 1970s, with 8.3 % of the votes and the election Ruedi Aeschbacher 1978 in the City Council of Zurich. Later, the share of the vote fluctuated between three and six per cent until they almost failed in the city of Zurich in the meantime introduced five percent hurdle in 2014. Even the cantonal parliament, the number of mandates has halved since the mid- 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s.