Federal Department of Foreign Affairs
foreign affairs ministry of Switzerland
The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA; German: Eidgenössisches Departement für auswärtige Angelegenheiten; French: Département fédéral des affaires étrangères; Italian: Dipartimento federale degli affari esteri; Romansh: ), so named since 1979, is one of the seven Departments of the Swiss government federal administration of Switzerland, and corresponds in its range of tasks to the ministry of foreign affairs in other countries. The department is always headed by one of the members of the Swiss Federal Council. Since 1 November 2017, the department is headed by Federal Councillor Ignazio Cassis.
Mission
The mission of the FDFA is to safeguard Switzerland's interests abroad and its relations with other countries, as stipulated in Art. 54, para. 1 of the Swiss Federal Constitution. The subsequent paragraph further outlines the parameters by which Swiss foreign policy is to be conducted:
The Confederation shall ensure that the independence of Switzerland and its welfare is safeguarded; it shall in particular assist in the alleviation of need and poverty in the world and promote respect for human rights and democracy, the peaceful co-existence of peoples as well as the conservation of natural resources.
At the beginning of every parliamentary legislature, the FDFA submits a foreign policy strategy to the Federal Council, setting out the main focus areas and foreign policy priorities for the term. For the 2020-23 period, these focus areas include:
Peace and security
Prosperity
Sustainability
Digitalisation
History
The FDFA has been one of the key Swiss ministries since the creation of the modern Swiss federal state in 1848.
Originally, what was then known as the "Federal Political Department" (FPD) was led by whomever held the rotating presidency, meaning the responsibility for foreign affairs changed on a yearly basis.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Federal Department of Foreign Affairs” as foreign affairs ministry of Switzerland. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as foreign affairs ministry of Switzerland. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q675983. VIAF identifies the subject as 145915869. The Library of Congress control number is n80154640. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979, 2017, 2020 and 1848.
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This entry incorporates text from “Federal Department of Foreign Affairs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.