ZHAW International Business Podium: EU Ambassador Visits ZHAW

Name: ZHAW International Business Podium: EU Ambassador Visits ZHAW
Start: 2025-10-29T16:15:00+01:00
End: 2025-10-29T17:45:00+01:00

29 October 2025

In the current edition of the International Business Podium, we are pleased to welcome the new EU Ambassador to Switzerland, Andreas Künne, to one of his first public appearances in Switzerland at the ZHAW School of Management and Law.

On September 18, 2025, H.E. Mr. Andreas Künne presented his credentials, signed by EU Council President António Costa and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, to Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter at the Federal Palace in Bern. He is thus now Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the EU to Switzerland.

The European Union is by far Switzerland's most important trading partner: in 2024, 60% of Switzerland's foreign trade in goods (exports + imports) was with the 27 member states of the European Union. This corresponds to a trade volume of over CHF 300 billion.

The ZHAW sees itself as a European university, which is reflected in initiatives such as the European Engineering Learning Innovation and Science Alliance (EELISA). For many years, an elective module entitled “European Affairs” has been offered each semester, analyzing, among other things, the close ties between Switzerland and Europe (including EFTA).

In this context, a tradition has developed whereby the ambassadors of the European Union, at the beginning of their term in Bern, also come to Winterthur for a public exchange at the ZHAW.

Andreas Künne looks back on a career spanning more than 30 years in the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany. He has served in various positions in German bilateral embassies abroad, as well as in the Foreign Office, the Federal Chancellery and the Permanent Representation of Germany to the EU in Brussels. Most recently, he was Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Czechia. Andreas Künne was born in Augsburg in 1966. He studied history, American and English studies at the Technical University of Berlin, the University of Mississippi and the University of Hamburg.