page_title: Regula Rytz
section_title: Political career
hierarchical_section_title: Regula Rytz / Political career
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Politikerinnen und Politiker der Schweizer Grünen. Von links nach rechts: Isaac Reber (Regierungsrat Kanton BL) und die drei Nationalrätinnen Regula Rytz (Parteipräsidentin, Kanton BE), Adèle Thorens Goumaz (VD) und Maya Graf (BL)
context_page_description: Regula Rytz is a Swiss historian and politician of the Green Party of Switzerland. She is a member of the National Council. From 2012 to 2016, she was the co-president of the Green Party of Switzerland. She was the party president from 2016 to 2020.
context_section_description: Originally a member of the SP political party and a primary school teacher, Rytz came from Thun to Bern to study history and sociology. Rytz was member of the Student/innenrat, the student council of the University of Bern from 1988 to 1994. At the university she organized counter-events to the conventional lectures, reanimated the feminist science (Feministische Wissenschaft) association, and was member of the action group Kritische Uni (literally: Critical University) where she spent a "very self-determined and motion-oriented time. I had the chance to organize substantive discussions, without being clamped in a fixed political party hierarchy", she recalled in an interview in 2011. When she joined the Green Alliance (Grünes Bündnis Bern) in 1987, Rytz initially was a base member. Between 1993 and 1998 she was also engaged as political secretary of Grünes Bündnis Bern, a regional fraction of the Green Party of Switzerland. In this function, she was also responsible for the organizational and strategic management, and provided technical and policy advice of Therese Frösch, the finance director of Bern. In 1994 she was elected to the parliament of the Canton of Bern where Rytz also was engaged in commissions focussing on education policy, fiscal policy, economic policy and state policy by 2005. Then she was elected as executive member (Gemeinderätin) of the city of Bern where she directed the department Tiefbau, Verkehr und Stadtgrün that provided the municipal civil engineering, transport and the urban green areas. In 2008 she was re-elected, getting the most votes of all governmental members. By 2012, she was responsible for the implementation of large projects such as the reconstruction of the Bahnhofplatz plaza and the construction of Tram Bern West.
  At the end of her tenure as member of the municipal executive in Bern, Rytz was elected to the National Council in the Swiss federal election in October 2011, and re-elected in October 2015. From May 2012 to April 2016 Rytz was co-president, in co-operation with Adèle Thorens, of the Green Party of Switzerland (Die Grünen). On 16 April 2016 she was elected as the party's exclusive president by further two years. In 2019, she ran for a seat in the Council of States, but was defeated by Hans Stöckli and Werner Salzmann.
  In November 2019, she entered the race for the 2019 Federal Council election, seeking to turn out Igniazio Cassis. In the 2019 Swiss federal election, the Green and Green Liberal Party made significant gains in the National Council with the Greens becoming the fourth-largest party. Historically, the fourth-largest party in the council is elected to a seat on the Federal council. The three largest parties indicated that they would not support her candidacy. Despite their association on environmental issues, the leader of the more moderate GLP advised Rytz not to pursue the seat.  Rytz was defeated in the election with members not wanting defeat the only member of the Swiss-Italian community.
  Rytz stepped down as President of the Greens in 2020, having reached the eight-year term limit in office. She was succeeded by Balthasar Glättli.
caption: Regula Rytz, second from the left, with other politicians of the green party
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