Switzerland Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a country in Europe. It consists of 26 cantons, and the city of Bern is the seat of the federal authorities. The sovereign state is a federal republic situated in western, central and southern Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning a total area of (land area ). While the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, the
Canton of Basel one of twenty-two "sovereign cantons" of Switzerland, enumerated as "Basel (Stadt und Land"). In this sense, as a sovereign member of the Swiss Confederacy, the canton of Basel continued to exist until 1999, when the revised constitution recognised the two former half-cantons as "cantons" for the first time. Several attempts have been made to reunite Basel-City and Basel-Country. In 1969, the citizens of Basel-Country defeated the motion in a referendum. The two cantons have since concluded a number of co-operation agreements, such as joint financing and governance of the University of Basel. Canton of Basel Basel was a canton of