Evangelical People's Party of Switzerland
The Evangelical People's Party of Switzerland, Swiss Evangelical Party, or Evangelical Party of Switzerland is a Protestant Christian-democratic political party in Switzerland, active mainly in the Cantons of Bern, Basel-Land, Basel-Stadt, Aargau and Zürich. "Evangelical" translates as evangelisch, the German term for "Protestant", as opposed to "evangelical" as used in Anglo-Saxon Christianity.
The EVP is conservative on euthanasia, abortion, registered partnerships and other typically Christian issues, centrist on economic issues and stands rather centre-left on issues of wealth redistribution, education, environmentalism and immigration. Among other things, it claims to be "dedicated to protecting the environment out of a sense of responsibility for Creation" and states that "the ethical values of the Bible should be the foundation of society."
The EVP is a member of the European Christian Political Party and was previously an observer member of the European People's Party until 2008. In the Federal Assembly of Switzerland the EVP forms a joint group with The Centre, formerly known as Christian Democratic People's Party.
In February 2023, in a shock result, Thomi Jourdan of Basel-Landschaft's EVP – which has a voter base of less than 4% in that canton – was elected into the state government, and will join four centrist-leftist-green colleagues. He is the first EVP government member on the state or federal level in Swiss history. This was due to a very active campaign from his side, and a lackluster one of his SVP opponent, national councillor Sandra Sollberger, who only appealed to right-wing voters. She also cited a lack of time which prevented her from campaigning properly.