Thank you.
On your first question, there is a consensus in Switzerland for an open economy. We have a socialist party in Switzerland that is the biggest in terms of votes in the population. They do not challenge this open and free trade economy we have, because they can see the benefit. But they also participate in shaping our open economy. They have helped to build a lot of safety networks into that policy to make sure their fundamental beliefs are not threatened.
Swiss open policy is not the wild west, where only 2% get.... Switzerland is a country that is really based on the middle class. We have a few who are extremely rich, but they are usually foreigners. We have a few poor people, that's true, but it's really a middle class society. It is shown in all the diversity of our policies, and this consensus really exists.
How do we make sure we can sustain this policy? One important thing is that with globalization you see shifts in work. Today the working population of Switzerland is not the same as it was 50 years ago. Now the big emphasis is on education innovation. That's our motto.
We know that the producing part will be done somewhere else, where labour costs are lower. But as long as we can produce a good education system, we have guarantees that our industries, if they are not taxed too much, will be able to innovate. As soon as they are able to innovate they will create jobs, and if people have the level of education needed they will get these jobs.
So there is a consensus in the way we are doing it now, from left to right, in the population.
As for our diversification strategy, I would like to point out a slight nuance concerning your dependence on the United States compared to our dependence on the European Union. The European Union is not a country. It happens to be 27 countries—27 as of January 1—that form a market, but as third states, they can all take a different position.
Officially, we speak three languages in Switzerland. This gives us an enormous advantage in terms of opening up different markets. If we lose a few markets in Ireland, we can make them up in Poland, because the dynamics are different. It is a market with standardized regulations, but implemented differently by each country. We obviously benefit from these advantages. Our dependence is therefore not completely analogous with your dependence on the United States.
Another policy we use to ensure our presence in the world is of course to create free trade conditions wherever we can and to offer development assistance to our partners. If we invest in Ukraine, that costs us money now, but in the future, we will do business there. The history of global economics has proven it. Korea today is not the same Korea of 45 years ago. We can all do business in Korea today because that country was able to develop and reach a certain level, which we can all benefit from today.