He studied Jurisprudence in Fribourg, Zürich, and Geneva, and was an avid handball player during his youth.

As a conservative centrist in the Federal Council of Switzerland, he advocated equal rights for women, and initiated economic reforms and modernized immigration and Swiss family law.

[2] In September 1982, he was the head of the special task force for the hostage situation in the Polish embassy in Bern.

Controversially, he approved the clandestine copying of Polish diplomatic documents.

[3] In November 1985, he asserted his significant representative role in international relations when he welcomed the American president Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva Summit.