Federal Statistics Act
(FStatA)

This Act has the aim:

a.

of provid­ing the Con­fed­er­a­tion with the stat­ist­ic­al prin­ciples that it re­quires to ful­fil its du­ties;

b.

of mak­ing pub­lic stat­ist­ic­al res­ults avail­able to the can­tons, the com­munes, the eco­nomy, the private sec­tor, rep­res­ent­at­ives from civil so­ci­ety and the gen­er­al pub­lic;

c.

of gear­ing the or­gan­isa­tion of fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies to­wards gath­er­ing and pro­cessing data ef­fi­ciently and in a man­ner con­sid­er­ate to in­ter­viewees;

d.

of pro­mot­ing na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al co­oper­a­tion in the area of stat­ist­ics;

e.

of en­sur­ing data pro­tec­tion with­in fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies.

¹ This Act ap­plies to all stat­ist­ic­al activ­it­ies:

a.

in­struc­ted by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil;

b.⁴

con­duc­ted or com­mis­sioned by the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ad­min­is­trat­ive units, not in­clud­ing the Fed­er­al In­sti­tutes of Tech­no­logy.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine which art­icles of the Act are ap­plic­able to the stat­ist­ic­al activ­it­ies of the Fed­er­al In­sti­tutes of Tech­no­logy, Swiss Post, and the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions en­ter­prises of the Con­fed­er­a­tion.⁵

³ It may de­clare the pro­vi­sions of this Act to be ap­plic­able for oth­er pub­lic cor­por­a­tions, in­sti­tu­tions or private in­di­vidu­als, if these en­tit­ies:

a.

are un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the Con­fed­er­a­tion;

b.

re­ceive fin­an­cial aid or pay­ments from the Con­fed­er­a­tion; or

c.

are en­gaged in an activ­ity re­quir­ing a li­cence or au­thor­isa­tion from the Con­fed­er­a­tion.

⁴ When mak­ing an en­tity sub­ject to this Act in ac­cord­ance with para­graphs 2 and 3, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall take ac­count of the free­dom of re­search as well as the stat­utory du­ties and the autonomy of the or­gan­isa­tions con­cerned.

¹ Fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies pre­pare rep­res­ent­at­ive res­ults in a pro­fes­sion­ally in­de­pend­ent way on the status of and changes in the pop­u­la­tion, the eco­nomy, so­ci­ety, edu­ca­tion, re­search, spa­tial plan­ning and the en­vir­on­ment in Switzer­land.⁶

² They as­sist in:

a.

the pre­par­a­tion, con­duct and re­view of fed­er­al tasks;

b.

the as­sess­ment of spe­cial­ist fields in which the du­ties of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and can­tons are closely in­ter­linked, such as edu­ca­tion, sci­ence and re­search, cul­ture, sport, leg­al mat­ters, tour­ism, pub­lic fin­ances, land man­age­ment, con­struc­tion and res­id­en­tial ac­com­mod­a­tion, trans­port, en­ergy, health­care and wel­fare;

c.

sup­port­ing re­search pro­jects of na­tion­al im­port­ance;

d.⁷

the as­sess­ment of the ful­fil­ment of the con­sti­tu­tion­al man­date to es­tab­lish equal op­por­tun­it­ies for men and wo­men and for dis­abled and non-dis­abled people;

e.⁸

the eval­u­ation of the em­ploy­ab­il­ity and activ­it­ies of uni­versity gradu­ates.

³ To per­form these du­ties, the Con­fed­er­a­tion works to­geth­er with the can­tons, the com­munes, aca­demia, the private sec­tor and rep­res­ent­at­ives from civil so­ci­ety as well as for­eign and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­isa­tions, and if pos­sible takes their in­form­a­tion needs in­to ac­count.

¹ In­so­far as the Con­fed­er­a­tion has the ne­ces­sary data avail­able or that such data be­comes avail­able to an or­gan­isa­tion sub­ject to this Act in the im­ple­ment­a­tion of fed­er­al law (fed­er­al ad­min­is­trat­ive data), sep­ar­ate sur­veys need not be con­duc­ted by fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies (dir­ect sur­veys, in­dir­ect sur­veys or sur­veys based on ob­ser­va­tions and meas­ure­ments).

² In the event that the data re­quired by fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies on third parties is avail­able from can­ton­al or com­mun­al agen­cies or from oth­er en­tit­ies of the pub­lic law, such data must be col­lec­ted from said agen­cies or en­tit­ies (in­dir­ect sur­vey).

³ Dir­ect sur­veys re­quire the col­lec­tion of new data at source by in­ter­view­ing nat­ur­al per­sons and leg­al en­tit­ies for the sole pur­poses of this Act. The num­ber and type of sur­veys are lim­ited to what is strictly ne­ces­sary.

⁴ In the case of sur­veys con­duc­ted in terms of this Act, the Con­fed­er­a­tion gives no­tice of the pur­pose and the leg­al basis for pro­cessing the data, and the cat­egor­ies of par­ti­cipants in the data re­cords and the data re­cip­i­ents.

⁵ The or­gan­isa­tions, agen­cies and oth­er pub­lic leg­al en­tit­ies in terms of para­graphs 1 and 2 must make the data avail­able to the Fed­er­al Stat­ist­ic­al Of­fice free of charge.⁹

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall com­mis­sion the re­quired sur­veys. In do­ing so, it may provide for hy­brid dir­ect and in­dir­ect sur­veys.

² It may del­eg­ate the au­thor­ity to a de­part­ment, a group or an of­fice to com­mis­sion:

a.

sur­veys that do not in­clude the col­lec­tion of any per­son­al data;

b.

sur­veys with no dis­clos­ure ob­lig­a­tion re­lat­ing to a small group of com­pan­ies and busi­nesses un­der private and pub­lic law;

c.

one-off sur­veys that re­late to a small group of per­sons.

³ The fed­er­al in­sti­tu­tions for re­search pro­mo­tion and re­search centres sub­ject to this Act may in­struct sur­veys with no dis­clos­ure ob­lig­a­tion that are one-off or lim­ited in time.

⁴ Oth­er or­gan­isa­tions gov­erned by this Act in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 2 para­graphs 2 or 3 have the autonom­ous power to in­struct:

a.

sur­veys that do not in­clude the col­lec­tion of any per­son­al data;

b.

sur­veys with no dis­clos­ure ob­lig­a­tion re­lat­ing to nat­ur­al per­sons and leg­al en­tit­ies un­der private and pub­lic law that work with the or­gan­isa­tion in or­der to ful­fil its oth­er du­ties;

c.

sur­veys with the dis­clos­ure ob­lig­a­tion if this is provided for by an­oth­er act.

⁵ Sur­veys for the pur­pose of test­ing meth­od­o­logy may be con­duc­ted without spe­cial in­struc­tion, provided there is no dis­clos­ure ob­lig­a­tion.

¹ Dir­ect sur­veys are vol­un­tary for nat­ur­al per­sons in private house­holds. The fore­go­ing is sub­ject to the ob­lig­a­tion to provide in­form­a­tion un­der Art­icle 10 of the Census Act of 22 June 2007¹⁰.¹¹

^1bis In­dir­ect sur­veys are man­dat­ory for nat­ur­al per­sons, leg­al en­tit­ies and or­gan­isa­tions that carry out pub­lic tasks.¹².

² The sur­vey shall be con­duc­ted in a format that im­poses the least pos­sible ad­min­is­trat­ive bur­den on those un­der ob­lig­a­tion.

³ Any per­son who provides in­form­a­tion vol­un­tar­ily for a sur­vey must do so in a truth­ful man­ner and to the best of their know­ledge. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may provide com­pens­a­tion for vol­un­tary in­form­a­tion where its pro­vi­sion re­quires an ex­cep­tion­al amount of time and ef­fort from the in­ter­viewees.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may on, com­mis­sion­ing a sur­vey, re­quire nat­ur­al per­sons and leg­al en­tit­ies un­der private and pub­lic law and their rep­res­ent­at­ives to dis­close in­form­a­tion if this is ab­so­lutely ne­ces­sary for the com­plete­ness, rep­res­ent­at­ive­ness, com­par­ab­il­ity or up-to-date­ness of a stat­ist­ic. The per­sons and en­tit­ies un­der this ob­lig­a­tion are re­quired to provide the in­form­a­tion truth­fully, with­in the dead­line, free of charge and in the pre­scribed form.¹³

¹ On com­mis­sion­ing a sur­vey, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the ex­tent to which the can­tons and com­munes par­ti­cip­ate in con­duct­ing the sur­vey.

² It may in­struct the trans­fer of data from their data re­cords, provided the leg­al basis for the data re­cords does not ex­pressly ex­clude use of such data for stat­ist­ic­al pur­poses. In the event that the data is sub­ject to a stat­utory duty of con­fid­en­ti­al­ity, it may not be di­vulged in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 19 of this Act as well as with Art­icle 22¹⁴ of the Data Pro­tec­tion Act of 19 June 1992¹⁵.

³ The can­tons and com­munes each meet the costs in­curred arising from their par­ti­cip­a­tion. Can­ton­al le­gis­la­tion may reg­u­late the al­loc­a­tion of costs between the can­tons and the com­munes dif­fer­ently.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may provide com­pens­a­tion for spe­cial ex­pendit­ures or for sup­ple­ment­ary ser­vices provided vol­un­tar­ily.

Re­search centres and oth­er suit­able or­gan­isa­tions may, with their con­sent, be called on to par­ti­cip­ate in sur­veys or in oth­er stat­ist­ic­al activ­it­ies, provided that data pro­tec­tion is guar­an­teed. Com­pens­a­tion may be provided.

¹ A multi-year pro­gramme is pre­pared for each le­gis­lature peri­od as part of the le­gis­lat­ive plan­ning.

² The multi-year pro­gramme provides in­form­a­tion on:

a.

the ma­jor stat­ist­ic­al activ­it­ies of fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies;

b.

the fin­an­cial and staff re­sources provided by the Con­fed­er­a­tion;

c.

the im­pact on par­ti­cipants and in­ter­viewees;

d.

in­ter­na­tion­al co­oper­a­tion.

¹ The Fed­er­al Stat­ist­ic­al Of­fice (Fed­er­al Of­fice) is the cent­ral stat­ist­ic­al of­fice of the Con­fed­er­a­tion. It provides stat­ist­ic­al ser­vices for the ad­min­is­trat­ive units of the Con­fed­er­a­tion, for oth­er users of data pro­duced by fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies and for the gen­er­al pub­lic.

² The Fed­er­al Of­fice co­ordin­ates fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies and draws up stand­ard prin­ciples in the in­terests of na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­par­ab­il­ity. It pre­pares the multi-year pro­gramme in co­oper­a­tion with oth­er stat­ist­ic­al of­fices and after con­sult­ing in­ter­ested parties. It nor­mally con­ducts the sur­veys and pre­pares com­pre­hens­ive com­pil­a­tions of data, provided the Fed­er­al Coun­cil does not as­sign this duty to an­oth­er stat­ist­ic­al of­fice or fed­er­al of­fice.

³ The Fed­er­al Of­fice co­oper­ates closely with the can­tons in the main­ten­ance of a Busi­ness and En­ter­prise Re­gister (BER) used as an aid in con­duct­ing sur­veys on busi­nesses and en­ter­prises. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may provide that spe­cif­ic data is also used for pur­poses re­lated to spe­cif­ic per­sons in the pub­lic in­terest.

^3bis The Fed­er­al Of­fice co­oper­ates closely with the can­tons in the main­ten­ance of a Fed­er­al Re­gister of Build­ings and Dwell­ings (RBD). Ac­cess to the Re­gister for stat­ist­ic­al, re­search and plan­ning pur­poses and to ful­fil stat­utory ob­lig­a­tions is open to the Con­fed­er­a­tion, and to each can­ton and com­mune in re­spect of the data per­tain­ing to its ter­rit­ory. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the man­age­ment of the Re­gister and de­cree more de­tailed pro­vi­sions on data pro­tec­tion. In­so­far as no per­son­al data is in­volved, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may make the data in the re­gister ac­cess­ible to the pub­lic.¹⁶

^3ter The Fed­er­al Of­fice shall in close co­oper­a­tion with the uni­versit­ies main­tain Swiss Re­gister of Stu­dents as an aid for com­pil­ing stat­ist­ics. The can­tons and the uni­versit­ies may use in­form­a­tion from this re­gister for checks that serve to safe­guard their fin­an­cial, ad­min­is­trat­ive and leg­al in­terests in ac­cord­ance with the In­ter­can­t­on­al Uni­versit­ies Agree­ment of 20 Feb­ru­ary 1997¹⁷. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the char­ac­ter­ist­ics to be dis­closed for this pur­pose and the mod­al­it­ies of dis­clos­ure.¹⁸

^3quater The Fed­er­al Of­fice main­tains a Ran­dom Sample Re­gister used as an aid for sur­veys of house­holds and per­sons. Pro­viders of pub­lic tele­phone ser­vices are ob­liged to provide the Fed­er­al Of­fice with the re­quired cus­tom­er data, as far as this data is avail­able. They may be com­pensated par­tially or fully for their time and ef­forts. The of­fices called on to par­ti­cip­ate in the sur­vey may not use the data for their own pur­poses. Data in the Ran­dom Sample Re­gister may only be used for sur­veys in ac­cord­ance with this Act.¹⁹

^3quin­quies The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the de­tails.²⁰

⁴ The ad­min­is­trat­ive units as well as the oth­er or­gan­isa­tions, de­pend­ing on the ex­tent to which they are sub­ject to Art­icle 2 para­graph 3, provide the Fed­er­al Of­fice with the res­ults and prin­ciples of their stat­ist­ic­al activ­it­ies and, if re­quired, data from their data re­cords and sur­veys in or­der that the Fed­er­al Of­fice may ful­fil its du­ties.

⁵ Du­ties of con­fid­en­ti­al­ity and dis­clos­ure pro­hib­i­tions may only pre­vent the dis­clos­ure of data to the Fed­er­al Of­fice if a Fed­er­al Act ex­pressly ex­cludes di­vul­ging or us­ing data for stat­ist­ic­al pur­poses. The Fed­er­al Of­fice may not di­vulge such data in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 19 of this Act as well as Art­icle 22²¹ of the Data Pro­tec­tion Act of 19 June 1992²².

¹ The oth­er ad­min­is­trat­ive units, as well as the or­gan­isa­tions par­tially sub­ject to the Act, con­duct the sur­veys in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 5 para­graph 2–4. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may on a case-to-case basis del­eg­ate fur­ther sur­veys to an ad­min­is­trat­ive unit, and with its con­sent also to a sub­or­din­ate body or in­sti­tu­tion.

² Fed­er­al sur­vey of­fices that are not ex­clus­ively in­volved in stat­ist­ics and re­search des­ig­nate one or more stat­ist­ic­al of­ficers for their stat­ist­ic­al activ­it­ies.

³ The stat­ist­ic­al ana­lys­is of ad­min­is­trat­ive data of the Con­fed­er­a­tion is in prin­ciple the duty of the ad­min­is­trat­ive unit, body or in­sti­tu­tion that holds the data. In agree­ment with the Fed­er­al Of­fice or by res­ol­u­tion of the Fed­er­al Coun­cil, the Fed­er­al Of­fice may be en­trus­ted with pro­cessing the data.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Of­fice ad­vises the oth­er fed­er­al stat­ist­ics gen­er­at­ors and provides them with the re­quired data with­in the terms of the data pro­tec­tion pro­vi­sions.

¹ The Fed­er­al Of­fice must be con­sul­ted on the design of the sur­veys, the com­pil­a­tion of the col­lec­ted data, as well as the oth­er data sources of the fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies.

² The Fed­er­al Of­fice en­deav­ours to co­ordin­ate with the can­ton­al stat­ist­ics au­thor­it­ies, and in par­tic­u­lar to co­ordin­ate the sur­vey pro­grammes, and to har­mon­ise the re­gisters or oth­er data re­cords for the pur­pose of pro­cessing stat­ist­ics.

³ It also co­oper­ates with the can­tons, the uni­versit­ies and the re­search centres on stat­ist­ics-re­lated re­search and train­ing mat­ters.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall es­tab­lish a Com­mit­tee for Fed­er­al Stat­ist­ics. The Com­mit­tee ad­vises the Fed­er­al Coun­cil and the fed­er­al stat­ist­ics gen­er­at­ors on im­port­ant is­sues re­lated to fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies.

² The can­tons, com­munes, aca­demia, the private sec­tor, rep­res­ent­at­ives from civil so­ci­ety as well as the ad­min­is­trat­ive units of the Con­fed­er­a­tion and the or­gan­isa­tions gov­erned by this Act are rep­res­en­ted in the Com­mit­tee.

¹ The data col­lec­ted or di­vulged for stat­ist­ic­al pur­poses may not be used for oth­er pur­poses un­less a Fed­er­al Act ex­pressly or­ders an­oth­er ap­plic­a­tion or those con­cerned provide their writ­ten con­sent.

² The per­sons en­trus­ted with stat­ist­ic­al activ­it­ies must treat as con­fid­en­tial all data re­lated to in­di­vidu­al nat­ur­al per­sons and leg­al en­tit­ies that they may have come across in their work. This ob­lig­a­tion also ap­plies in par­tic­u­lar to per­sons who are in­volved by the can­tons, the com­munes or oth­er of­fices in the con­duct of sur­veys or who re­ceive data in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 19.

¹ In or­der to ful­fil its stat­ist­ic­al du­ties, the Fed­er­al Of­fice may link data, provided the data is rendered an­onym­ous. In the event that data links in­volve data con­sidered es­pe­cially sens­it­ive or that data links gen­er­ate per­son­al pro­files, the linked data must be de­leted on com­ple­tion of the stat­ist­ic­al ana­lys­is. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil reg­u­lates the de­tails.

² Stat­ist­ic­al of­fices of the can­tons and the com­munes may only link data from the Fed­er­al Of­fice with oth­er data in ful­filling their stat­ist­ic­al du­ties with the writ­ten con­sent of the Fed­er­al Of­fice and by tak­ing ac­count of its re­quire­ments.

¹ All of­fices that pro­cess per­son­al data for or from fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies must pro­tect this data against un­au­thor­ised hand­ling by in­tro­du­cing ne­ces­sary or­gan­isa­tion­al and tech­nic­al meas­ures.

² The of­fices con­duct­ing the sur­veys may only re­tain the name and ad­dress lists used to pre­pare, con­duct and co­ordin­ate sur­veys for as long as these lists are re­quired for pro­cessing for the afore­men­tioned pur­poses. The pro­vi­sions on the Busi­nesses and En­ter­prises Re­gister are re­served.

³ Sur­vey ma­ter­i­al con­tain­ing names or per­son­al iden­ti­fic­a­tion num­bers of the in­ter­viewees in ad­di­tion to the re­ques­ted data may only be pro­cessed by the of­fices au­thor­ised to con­duct the sur­vey. This ma­ter­i­al and data must be des­troyed as soon as pro­cessing has been com­pleted.

⁴ Data may be stored and archived at the com­pet­ent stat­ist­ic­al of­fices of the Con­fed­er­a­tion, at the Fed­er­al Of­fice or, with the writ­ten con­sent of the Fed­er­al Of­fice and tak­ing ac­count of re­quire­ments, at the can­ton­al stat­ist­ic­al of­fices, provided it does not con­tain any names or per­son­al iden­ti­fic­a­tion num­bers of the in­ter­viewees.²⁴

¹ In ad­di­tion to the pro­vi­sions of this Act, the pro­vi­sions of the Data Pro­tec­tion Act of 19 June 1992²⁵ on the pro­cessing of the data for re­search, plan­ning and stat­ist­ics ap­ply to data pro­tec­tion for all stat­ist­ic­al activ­it­ies.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall is­sue sup­ple­ment­ary pro­vi­sions on data pro­tec­tion and on data se­cur­ity for the col­lec­tion and pro­cessing of data by fed­er­al bod­ies.

¹ Art­icles 14, 15 and 16 para­graph 1 of this Act and, provided it is not con­trary to these art­icles, can­ton­al law that reg­u­lates the pro­cessing of data not re­lated to spe­cif­ic per­sons ap­plies to the pro­cessing of data by can­ton­al bod­ies. In the ab­sence of such reg­u­la­tions, fed­er­al law ap­plies.

² In the event that the can­tons and com­munes are in­volved in con­duct­ing a sur­vey, the can­tons de­term­ine an of­fice that will en­sure com­pli­ance with data pro­tec­tion.

¹ The rel­ev­ant stat­ist­ic­al res­ults and prin­ciples are pub­lished in user-friendly form in the of­fi­cial lan­guages. Res­ults that are not pub­lished are made ac­cess­ible in an ap­pro­pri­ate man­ner.

² The Fed­er­al Of­fice provides the re­quired fa­cil­it­ies for this pur­pose; these fa­cil­it­ies are also avail­able to the oth­er stat­ist­ics gen­er­at­ors for dis­sem­in­at­ing their res­ults.

³ Un­less such pub­lic­a­tion is re­quired by law, the res­ults may not en­able any con­clu­sions to be drawn re­gard­ing the cir­cum­stances of in­di­vidu­al nat­ur­al per­sons or leg­al en­tit­ies that the per­son or en­tity con­cerned has not already made gen­er­ally avail­able.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­strict ac­cess to stat­ist­ic­al res­ults for oth­er im­port­ant reas­ons.

¹ The Fed­er­al Of­fice and the oth­er stat­ist­ics gen­er­at­ors carry out spe­cial data ana­lyses for the ad­min­is­trat­ive units of the Con­fed­er­a­tion and, where they have the ca­pa­city, for third parties.

² The fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies pro­viders may dis­close per­son­al data for pur­poses not re­lated to spe­cif­ic per­sons, in par­tic­u­lar for re­search, plan­ning or stat­ist­ics, to re­search and stat­ist­ic­al of­fices of the Con­fed­er­a­tion and to third parties, if:

a.

the data is rendered an­onym­ous, as soon as the pur­pose of the pro­cessing the data is achieved;

b.

the re­cip­i­ent di­vulges the data with the con­sent of the stat­ist­ics gen­er­at­ors;

c.

the re­cip­i­ent only dis­closes the res­ults so that the per­sons con­cerned are not re­cog­nis­able; and

d.

the re­cip­i­ent meets the re­quire­ments for com­pli­ance with stat­ist­ic­al secrecy and the oth­er data pro­tec­tion pro­vi­sions.

³ The Fed­er­al Of­fice may carry out short-term re­search, ana­lys­is and ad­vis­ory du­ties in con­nec­tion with fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies if the com­mis­sion­ing party bears the costs or provides the re­quired staff.

¹ Stat­ist­ic­al res­ults that have been pub­lished, made avail­able, or pro­cessed from data from fed­er­al stat­ist­ic­al bod­ies may be used or re­pro­duced without copy­right au­thor­isa­tion provided ref­er­ence is made to their source.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may make ex­cep­tions for the use of data for com­mer­cial pur­poses.

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil reg­u­lates the fees for pub­lic­a­tions, ser­vices and au­thor­isa­tions.

Any per­son who in a sur­vey com­mis­sioned un­der this Act wil­fully provides false in­form­a­tion or does not or does not prop­erly ful­fil the duty to dis­close in­form­a­tion des­pite re­ceiv­ing a re­mind­er is li­able to a fine.

¹ Any per­son who wil­fully vi­ol­ates the pro­vi­sions of Art­icle 14 by di­vul­ging data that must re­main secret or by us­ing data for pur­poses oth­er than stat­ist­ic­al pur­poses shall be li­able to a cus­todi­al sen­tence not ex­ceed­ing three years or to a mon­et­ary pen­alty.

² If the of­fend­er acts through neg­li­gence, he or she shall be li­able to a mon­et­ary pen­alty.

¹ The can­tons pro­sec­ute and judge vi­ol­a­tions of the dis­clos­ure ob­lig­a­tion in the case of sur­veys con­duc­ted by can­ton­al bod­ies, and vi­ol­a­tions of stat­ist­ic­al secrecy by can­ton­al bod­ies.

² The com­pet­ent de­part­ment pro­sec­utes and judges the oth­er of­fences in ac­cord­ance with the pro­ced­ur­al reg­u­la­tions of the Fed­er­al Act of 22 March 1974²⁷ on Ad­min­is­trat­ive Crim­in­al law.

³ In ad­di­tion, the gen­er­al pro­vi­sions of the Crim­in­al Code²⁸ and Art­icles 6 and 7 of the Fed­er­al Act of 22 March 1974 on Ad­min­is­trat­ive Crim­in­al Law also ap­ply.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil is re­spons­ible for im­ple­ment­a­tion and is­sues the im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions.

² It may with­in the scope of its own powers con­clude agree­ments on in­ter­na­tion­al co­oper­a­tion.

¹ This Act is sub­ject to an op­tion­al ref­er­en­dum.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines the date on which this Act comes in­to force.

Com­mence­ment date: 1 Au­gust 1993³⁰