The 17th Summit of the BRICS will be held on July 6 and 7, 2025 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
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What is the scope of the group of BRICS countries and what should Switzerland be the position of them? Reviews diverge.
For almost two decades, the BRICS group has been trying to upset international policy. During its summits, this “simple regrouping of states”, as described by a report of the Federal Foreign Affairs Department, “propagates and skillfully puts on stage” a “vision of the world and the image of itself” which seduces emerging and developing countries: that of a “world order” to be adapted to the new centers of power.
The term BRICS was invented in 2001 by an economist from the bank ofExternal linkAmerican investment Goldman Sachs, who, with the slogan “Building Better Economic Brics”, drew attention to economic growth and the importance of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The first BRICS summit was held almost a decade later in Ekaterinburg, Russia, during the 2009 financial crisis – South Africa joined them the following year.
Be careful, however, not to underestimate this group of states, warns the Swiss political adviser Remo Reginold. On the contrary, he sees him in the BRICS “the symbol of an evolution which announces a new era in global policy”.
To describe them, he prefers to speak of “conglomerate”: an assembly of materials of structure, size and various properties, maintained together by a matrix. Namely the common will to break Western domination into the world.
The BRICS notably demand a reform of the UN and the Bretton Woods institutions that are the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. They want in particular that the interests of the South be better represented.
For the political advisor, “Switzerland, and the West in general”, must learn “to understand the BRICS and to correctly interpret their signals”. Western prism obliges, the functioning of the group’s informal networks has not been too little studied so far. However, if Switzerland is skilful, uses its networks, flexibility and interests, “it would even have the potential to become a bridge between the North and the South,” said Rémo Reginold. But this also involves development cooperation, a field in which Switzerland, like many Western countries, reduces its efforts at present.
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Other Swiss specialists give them less importance. In 2024, the Think Tank Avenir Switzerland spoke of a “agitation on the BRICS”. The authors, Eveline Hutter and Simon Stocker, recognize that “non-Western countries have developed a new conscience”, but underline that “beyond rhetoric, (…) The growth of the BRICS (…) was mainly carried by China” and that “the development of other states is less exciting”. They also underline the many differences, even contradictions, within the group. Some members have a tense bilateral past, such as China and India.
According to the analysis of the Swiss future, it is “almost excluded that the BRICS evolve in a block of power resolutely hostile to the West”. Switzerland, estimates the reflection group, should nevertheless follow their evolution closely.
Internationally, experts also consider the BRICS less as rivals of the West than as a complementary platform. For Kai Michael Kenkel, of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, it all depends on the attitude of the West: is it ready to carry out the required reforms and give more voice to the chapter to the global south?
The professor quotes a wide range of fields, ranging from financial infrastructure to development cooperation, in which the West has an interest in acting. “If he refrains from doing so, the countries of the BRICS which aspire to a complete abandonment of the Western World Order could impose themselves.” Therefore, he believes, “reforms are certainly the best alternative for the West”. But Kai Michael Kenkel also underlines the internal heterogeneity of the group of states, both in terms of values and form of government. The countries that considered themselves rather close to Western values, like Brazil, feel more and more marginalized. “In Brazil, we were very worried about the fact that since the widening of the BRICS, the authoritarian states are in the majority.” What to lead to a marked political division within the group and to the absence of a common strategic compass.
Jagannath Panda, director of the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs, takes the example of his country, India, to underline the risks that would involve a formalization by the BRICS of their institution: “China is for us both a rival and our main trading partner.” If many consider the BRICS as a project controlled by China, India sees them as an important element of its foreign policy strategy. “India considers above all the BRICS as a multipolar base allowing it to extend its economic influence in the global south, including in the Middle East and beyond,” explains Jagannath Panda.
India can again take advantage of Russian raw materials, both for its own use and for the resale to Western countries which, due to sanctions, can no longer buy Russian oil directly. The war in Ukraine thus influenced the strengthening of cooperation between Russia and the BRICS.
Does Switzerland have the importance for the BRICS?
BRICS sometimes presenting large differences, their relationships with each state must be examined on a case -by -case basis. According to Jagannath Panda, “Switzerland is perceived by the BRICS as a neutral country. Many states therefore tend to maintain neutral relations with it. ” What increase the room for maneuver in cooperation.
With its absence of colonial past and its position of non-alignment, Switzerland is not at the origin of the frustration which led to the creation of the BRICS, underlines Jagannath Panda. Because of its high demographic density, India, for example, is very interested in the expertise of Switzerland in fields such as technology, education or even the organization of conferences.
Kai Michael Kenkel gives the example of Brazil, for which Switzerland “is above all a partner in the fields with high added value”.
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Switzerland maintains bilateral relations with each of these countries and recognizes “the growing importance of the Brics countries”, as indicated by the 2024 foreign policy report. However, their purely economic role is for it “rather weak”: in early 2025, “despite their global growth, the BRICS still play a role of second plan in Swiss foreign trade, since their share, dominated by China, is only 12%,” said the report. By way of comparison, Switzerland’s trade relations with the EU (around 52%) and the United States (around 17%) are significantly larger.
The fact remains that, regardless of the external trade balance, official Switzerland notes a geopolitical shift to the countries of the BRICS. The group has “sufficient political and economic power to give credibility to the thesis according to which the previously dominant Western countries lose importance for the benefit of new emerging countries for strong economic growth”.
According to the Confederation, it would be “wrong to give a purely negative assessment of the growing requirement that the BRICS have to shape the world order”. But it is crucial that the Member States are not content “to claim a greater participation and a more important part of responsibility in global governance, but truly assume this responsibility”. With the risk of seeing democracy and human rights “questioned, reinterpreted or relegated to the background by geopolitics”.
The Federal Council intends to respond to these developments by contributing to the strengthening of the multilateral system. “It intends in particular to draw attention to the primacy of international law,” said the foreign policy report.
Rely and verified by Giannis Mavris, translated from German by Albertine Bourget/Ptur
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