Christoph Wolfram Blocher (; born 11 October 1940) is a Swiss industrialist and politician who served as a Member of the Swiss Federal Council from 2004 to 2007. A member of the Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC), he headed the Federal Department of Justice and Police. As an industrialist, he became wealthy as CEO and majority shareholder in the EMS-Chemie corporation, now run by his daughter, Magdalena Martullo-Blocher.
A controversial figure, Blocher is known for his role in transforming Swiss politics, shifting it to the right, as well as the Swiss People's Party, which has become "the dominant force in national politics". As he "developed a eurosceptic and anti-immigration agenda that has shaken up the cozy post-war consensual system prevailing in neutral Switzerland", Blocher served as the de facto leader of the SVP and a symbol of the party, holding its vice presidency from 2008 until 2018.
Early life Blocher was born 11 October 1940 in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, the seventh of eleven children, to Wolfram (1897–1972) and Ida (née Baur; 1908–1994).Obituary in NZZ, 15 April 1994 He primarily grew-up in Laufen-Uhwiesen and later in Kilchberg. His father was a pastor and his mother a homemaker.Copley, Caroline & Bart, Katharina (1 February 2015). "Right-Wing Firebrand Shakes Up Cosy Swiss Politics". The Star. Retrieved 1 February 2015. His second great-grandfather Johann Georg Blocher (1811–1899), a teacher, originally hailed from Beuggen near Rheinfelden in the Grand Duchy of Baden and immigrated to Switzerland around 1833, becoming a citizen in the village of Schattenhalb in the Bernese Alps, in 1861.
Blocher served in the Swiss military as an Aerial Defense Regiment Commander and Colonel. Blocher earned a certificate at the Wülflingen school of agriculture. In 1961, Blocher began studying independently for the Swiss Matura. In 1963, Blocher completed and passed the exams for the Swiss Matura, and in 1964, he passed an additional exam in Latin to pursue legal studies at university. He then studied law at the University of Zürich, in Montpellier, and in Paris. He has a DEA degree in law, and in 1971, he was awarded a doctorate in jurisprudence from the University of Zürich. While at the University of Zürich, Blocher co-founded the Students' Ring, which opposed the 1968 student protests and the left-wing politics on university campuses.
Professional career In 1969, Blocher started his professional career by entering the legal department of EMS-Chemie (previously known as Emser-Werke AG) as a trainee and later legal counsel. In 1972, he was ultimately elected to serve as chairman of the board and general director, which position he held in economically difficult times. The company owner, Werner L. Oswald, passed away in 1979. In 1983, Blocher acquired EMS, after he unsuccessfully was looking for a buyer for the heirs of the company, through a leveraged buyout for roughly 16 million Swiss Francs.
Blocher mainly financed the acquisition through loans backed by personal savings, securities and his family home in Feldmeilen, however most of it was debt capital. At the time of the acquisition, EMS had a market value of roughly 100–125 million Swiss Francs. When Blocher was voted into the Swiss Federal Council in 2003, he retired from all business functions in EMS and sold his majority holding to his four children on 30 December 2003. Blocher's oldest daughter, Magdalena Martullo-Blocher, became CEO of EMS on 1 January 2004. In 2014, Blocher bought shares of the newspaper Basler Zeitung and then bought the free newspaper Zehnder. In 2018, the magazine Bilanz estimated the Blocher family's fortune to be between 10 and 11 billion Swiss francs, placing it among the ten wealthiest families in Switzerland.
Political career Blocher built his political career by campaigning for smaller government, for a free-market economy, against Switzerland's membership in the European Union and for more tightly controlled immigration. He stated he entered the political arena by chance due to a local zoning dispute. Blocher joined the SVP in 1972 and became the SVP president of the SVP chapter in Meilen in 1974. After being elected to the Cantonal Council of Zürich in 1975, Blocher was elected to the Swiss National Council and represented the canton of Zürich there from 25 November 1979 until his election to the federal council on 12 December 2003 as a deputy of the Swiss People's Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei/Union démocratique du centre; SVP/UDC), and then again from 4 December 2011 to 30 May 2014.
In addition to leading the Zürich chapter of the Swiss People's Party, Blocher was a cofounder of the Action for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland (Aktion für eine unabhängige und neutrale Schweiz), and he served as the president of the organization from its foundation in 1986 until his election to the Federal Council in 2003. In 1982, Blocher founded Arbeitsgruppe Südliches Afrika, a pro-South Africa working group made up of Swiss members of parliament, such as Ulrich Schlüer. According to a Swiss government-funded research study authored by historian Peter Hug, records of the South African military intelligence agency show that the agency valued contact with Blocher, Peter Sager and other Swiss figures to create a positive view of Apartheid South Africa.
When Blocher was elected president of the Zürich SVP in 1977, he declared his intent to oversee significant change in the political line of the Zürich SVP, bringing an end to debates that aimed to open the party up to a wide array of opinions. Blocher soon consolidated his power in Zürich, and began to renew the organisational structures, activities, campaigning style and political agenda of the local branch. The young members of the party were boosted with the establishment of a cantonal Young SVP (JSVP) in 1977, as well as political training courses. The ideology of the Zürich branch was also reinforced, and the rhetoric hardened, which resulted in the best election result for the Zürich branch in fifty years in the 1979 federal election, with an increase from 11.3% to 14.5%. This was contrasted with the stable level in the other cantons, although the support also stagnated in Zürich through the 1980s.
The struggle that existed between the SVP's largest branches of Bern and Zürich continued into the early 1990s. While the Bern-oriented faction represented the old moderate style of the SVP, the Zürich-oriented wing led by Blocher represented a new radical right-wing populist agenda. The Zürich wing began to politicise asylum issues, and the question of European integration started to dominate Swiss political debates. They also adopted more confrontational methods. The Zürich-wing subsequently started to gain ground in the party at the expense of the Bern-wing, and the party became increasingly centralised as a national party, in contrast to the traditional Swiss system of parties with loose organisational structures and weak central powers. During the 1990s, the party also doubled its number of cantonal branches (to eventually be represented in all cantons), which strengthened the power of the Zürich-wing since most new sections supported their agenda. Although Swiss political parties tended to lack dominant national leaders, Blocher became the de facto leader of the national SVP and one of the most famous Swiss politicians.
In 1991, the party for the first time became the strongest party in Zürich, with 20.2% of the vote. It also broke through in the early 1990s in both Zürich and Switzerland as a whole, and experienced dramatically increasing results in elections. From being the smallest of the four governing parties at the start of the 1990s, the party by the end of the decade emerged as the strongest party in Switzerland. At the same time, the party expanded its electoral base towards new voter demographics. The SVP in general won its best results in cantons where the cantonal branches adopted the agenda of the Zürich wing. In the 1999 federal election, the SVP for the first time became the strongest party in Switzerland with 22.5% of the vote, a 12.6% share increase. This was the biggest increase of votes for any party in the entire history of the Swiss proportional electoral system, which was introduced in 1919.
Libel incident In 1997 a speech, Blocher stated, "The Jewish organizations that demand money, claim that ultimately it is not about money. But let's be honest: This is exactly what it is about." These remarks were in relation to a World Jewish Congress-initiated lawsuit calling for restitution of Nazi-seized assets that were hidden in Swiss banks. The following day, the tabloid Sonntags-Blick published an article with the headline "Blocher: The Jews are all about money." Blocher filed for libel against the editor-in-chief of the tabloid. The district court acquitted the journalist because Blocher "unrestrainedly addressed anti-Semitic instincts." Blocher appealed the verdict. Before the Zürich supreme court, the two parties agreed on a settlement. Later the chairman of the 4th bureau of the Zürich district court filed a criminal complaint against Blocher on the grounds that the preoccupation with the speech had let them believe that Blocher had violated the law on racism. The district court requested to lift the immunity of Blocher, which he enjoyed through his office as a member of the National Council. Both chambers of the parliament denied the request.
Federal councillor
2003 election
The People's Party emerged as the largest party in the National Council in the Federal Assembly election of 19 October 2003 with 26.6% of the vote. Blocher personally topped the poll in Zürich, and became Switzerland's most prominent and controversial politician. Since 1929, the People's Party (known until 1971 as the Party of Farmers, Traders and Independents [BGB]) had held a seat on the seven-member Swiss Federal Council. At the time the current coalition formed in 1959, the BGB was the smallest party represented on the Council. By 2003 it had become the largest party, and demanded another seat at the expense of the Christian Democrats, now the smallest party. The SVP nominated Blocher as its second candidate. This generated a good deal of controversy; previously most SVP councillors had come from the party's more moderate centrist-agrarian wing.
After threats of pulling the other People's Party member, Samuel Schmid (a member of the centrist wing), off the council and going into opposition, Blocher was elected on 10 December 2003. He took the seat of Ruth Metzler-Arnold, only the third federal councillor in history (and the first since 1872) not to be reelected. In the third round Blocher beat Metzler with 121 to 116 votes. The election was anticipated as a major media event,Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 8 December 2003 and was widely watched as a live broadcast. After Blocher's election, members of the Swiss political Left spontaneously protested.Tages-Anzeiger, 12 December 2003 As a result of a reshuffling of Federal Council seats, Blocher became head of the Federal Department of Justice and Police.
Controversies