Philippine Ambassador Maria Theresa Lazaro

BERN, SWITZERLAND – Relations between the Philippines and Switzerland can be traced as early as the 1800s, the Philippine ambassador to Switzerland said.

Ambassador Maria Theresa Lazaro said relations between the two countries started in the early 1800s when Swiss traders, missionaries and travelers ventured into Southeast Asia.

But it was not until 1851 that the initiative to open a Swiss official representation in the Philippines was first taken up. Eleven years later or in 1862, a Swiss honorary consulate was established in Manila.

The information was disclosed by the Philippine Embassy in a reception it hosted for the Philippines’ 111th Independence Day celebration at the Historical Museum of Bern, a building built in 1894 in the style of a 16th-century castle.

At the reception, Lazaro said that the Swiss honorary consulate in Manila was the first Swiss diplomatic post established in Asia.

The diplomat guests meanwhile said the Historical Museum of Bern was an interesting venue for an Independence Day celebration.

Fabio Grosso, a jurist in the Swiss federal chancellery who has a Filipina wife, said he had attended four Philippine Independence Day events and found this very interesting “especially since the Ambassador traced the relationship between Switzerland and the Philippines. And being inside the historical museum, that’s a parallel thing, it was a new thing.”

Stable relations

Philippine-Swiss diplomatic relations may be described as stable. Aside from the Embassy in Berne, there is a Philippine Mission to the United Nations based in Geneva and an honorary Consul-General in Basel to tend mostly to the estimated 15,000 Filipinos who live and work in Switzerland. Switzerland also maintains an embassy in Manila.

A highlight of Philippines-Swiss relations was the mutual legal cooperation that successfully recovered up to US$ 683 million of Marcos’s ill-gotten assets stashed in Switzerland.

Another focus of interest of the Philippine government, the academe and civil society is the Swiss federalist system, which has been proposed as an appropriate political model for the Philippines given its cultural diversity similar to the European nation.
 
Economically, Switzerland ranks only 25th in the Philippines’ trade partners in 2004, with electronic goods being the main exports from Switzerland.

There are however about 55 Swiss firms operating in the Philippines in the pharmaceutical/chemical, food, trading and distribution, tourism and in business consultancy industries, according to the Office of European Affairs of the Philippine foreign affairs department.