What have been the foreign policy concerns of Swiss members of parliament since 1945 and how did the Federal Council respond to them? Answers to such questions can be found in the parliamentary interventions. The Historical Service of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs archives these interventions in the three following collections and regularly updates them:

•  Switzerland’s relations with the Near East (fr/de)
•  Switzerland’s relations with South Africa (fr/de)
•  Switzerland’s positions during the Second World War (fr/de)

These collections are designed to provide rapidly, within each of these areas, a general idea of the issues that drew the attention of Parliament and the public in the period starting with the end of the Second World War. Each collection has two entries: a chronological entry (list) and a thematic entry (index). The thematic index is intended to facilitate the identification of the most important texts on a particular theme; references of secondary importance or existing interventions on a theme are eliminated.

Both the chronological list and the thematic index provide access to the full text: the intervention, the Federal Council’s response and, if necessary, the follow-up to it have been brought together in the same document (format pdf).

Subsequent versions of these collections have been published or circulated by the Historical Service of the FDFA under the following titles:

• Switzerland – South Africa 1948-1994 (in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Archives, 2000; ISBN 3-908439-04-3)
• Switzerland and the Second World War. Collection of parliamentary interventions 1985-2000 (2001)
• Switzerland – Near East from the post-war years to the 1990s (in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Archives, 2004; ISBN 3-0340-0684-5)

The collections are completely updated twice a year, in spring and in autumn.
The database of the Swiss Parliamentary Services, Curia Vista, is updated more regularly but its indexation is different.