Traditionally, Switzerland avoids alliances that might entail military, political, or direct economic action and has been neutral since the end of its expansion in 1515. The English name Switzerland is a compound containing Switzer, an obsolete term for the Swiss, which was in use during the 16th to 19th centuries. In 2017, permanent residents who spoke German (mostly Swiss German dialects) as their main language or co-main language numbered about 63% (5.2 million), followed by 22.9% (1.9 million) for French (mostly Swiss French, but including some Franco-Provençal dialects), 8.2% (678,000, mostly Swiss Italian, but including Insubric dialects) for Italian and less than 0.5% (44,000) for Romansh. The numerous lakes make Switzerland an attractive place for sailing. Top wine consuming nations per capita, 2006, The Federal Authorities of the Swiss Confederation, Sovereign states and dependencies of Europe, autonomous country of the Kingdom of Denmark, Commission against Racism and Intolerance, Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China, Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique, Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Convention on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Switzerland&oldid=980841928, French-speaking countries and territories, German-speaking countries and territories, Italian-speaking countries and territories, Member states of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, Member states of the European Free Trade Association, Articles containing Italian-language text, Articles with dead external links from July 2020, Articles with permanently dead external links, Articles with dead external links from June 2016, Articles with German-language sources (de), Articles with dead external links from July 2016, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, Articles containing Romansh-language text, Pages using collapsible list with both background and text-align in titlestyle, Articles containing explicitly cited English-language text, Articles containing Alemannic German-language text, Articles containing Old High German-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2016, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2019, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz area identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Officially the Republic of China, participates as ", This page was last edited on 28 September 2020, at 19:46. Discover how the population of Switzerland has grown from 2.4 millions in 1850 to 8.6 millions today. Those aged 25 to 44 were 58.4% Christian (33.1% Roman Catholic, 18.7% Reformed, 6.7% other), 31.0% unaffiliated, 0.2% Jewish, 7.5% Muslim, 1.7% other religions. Following the 2015 Federal Council elections, the seven seats in the Federal Council were distributed as follows: The function of the Federal Supreme Court is to hear appeals against rulings of cantonal or federal courts. An important clause of the constitution was that it could be re-written completely if this was deemed necessary, thus enabling it to evolve as a whole rather than being modified one amendment at a time.[44]. Additionally the headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) are located in Basel since 1930. [213] In addition the three main centres of Zürich, Geneva and Basel are recognised for their particularly great quality of life. One of the most important tribal groups in the Swiss region was the Helvetii.