Christoph Schaltegger and René Scheu win the Bonny Foundation’s Freedom Prize 2025

The award winners René Scheu (left) and Christoph Schaltegger head the Institute for Swiss Economic Policy (IWP) at the University of Lucerne.

It's a rare combination: one was a financial scientist and founding dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at the University of Lucerne. The other was a philosopher and arts editor of the NZZ. In 2021, Christoph Schaltegger from Basel and René Scheu from Zurich left their established positions to jointly establish something completely new in central Switzerland: the Institute for Swiss Economic Policy (IWP) at the University of Lucerne. Supported by private donations, it conducts applied academic research on economic policy topics and is committed to disseminating its results and findings to a wider audience.

In just four years of its existence, the scientific startup has already made a name for itself in the Swiss economic policy discourse.

Be it the high salaries paid in the federal administration compared to those for equivalent qualifications in the private sector, the often low efficiency of specific government subsidies, or the astonishingly intact opportunities for economic advancement in Switzerland for decades: the IWP provides detailed figures and new analyses, thus repeatedly demonstrating how a liberal economic policy in Switzerland can contribute to ensuring that prosperity and freedom go hand in hand and are maintained.

Working closely together as director and managing director of the IWP, Schaltegger and Scheu have succeeded in creating a work that, with its ties to the University of Lucerne, its studies, and numerous prominent lectures, remains scholarly, yet with its rather unconventional appearance and ambition, breaks away from the purely academic and addresses a broader, interested public. Those who support this approach can support it with donations, while critics are irritated by it. Philosopher Scheu and economist Schaltegger are pleased by this.

The Freedom Foundation, founded by liberal business lawyer and former administrative director and FDP National Councilor Jean-Pierre Bonny, was also pleased. It has been awarding the Freedom Prize, endowed with a substantial CHF 100,000, annually since 2013. Previous winners include former Federal Councilor Kaspar Villiger, economist Monika Bütler, and last year's NZZ editor Katharina Fontana.

In 2025, the Freedom Prize will go to Schaltegger and Scheu, "because they stand for trial and error rather than plan and slogan," as Beat Brechbühl, Vice President of the Bonny Foundation, put it in his laudatory speech before more than 650 invited guests at the Kursaal Bern on Thursday. And "because the two demonstrate that one can think freely, write clearly, and act objectively – without becoming partisan." The award is being given to a rare "double nuclear power plant of Switzerland's scientific liberal enlightenment," Brechbühl explained – and the people of Bern applauded the duo, who, from a safe distance in Lucerne, influenced the political hustle and bustle of the federal capital.