August 20, 2025
‘Shocking and unlawful’: Pegasos upsets Nunningen & the canton of Solothurn
‘Shocking and unlawful’: euthanasia organisation Pegasos upsets Nunningen and the canton of Solothurn reports Dimitri Hofer.
The euthanasia organisation Pegasos has been operating in Nunningen for a year and a half. The company has not submitted the necessary application to change the use of the premises – and is taking the matter to court.
Since February 2024, the Basel-based euthanasia organisation Pegasos has been assisting people in Nunningen to end their lives. However, the organisation has not yet applied for the necessary change of use for the property.
The municipality of Nunningen and the canton of Solothurn are very unhappy about this situation.
Philipp Muster, Mayor of Nunningen
‘It is offensive, unfair to the neighbours and unlawful,’ says Philipp Muster, mayor of Nunningen. He suspects that Pegasos does not want to submit the application for change of use for fear of objections from the critical neighbourhood.
‘I see this move as a way to buy time,’ he says. The municipality of Nunningen is not in contact with the assisted suicide organisation. It is backed by Ruedi Habegger, the brother of the well-known assisted suicide activist Erika Preisig.
A few weeks before Pegasos began its activities in the hamlet of Roderis in Nunningen, the organisation informed the municipal council of Nunningen about what would be happening on the premises in future.
During the construction period, the municipality was not aware that an assisted suicide organisation would soon be setting up in the tranquil Schwarzbubenland region. The Nunningen building commission only then discovered that the building did not comply with building regulations and obliged Pegasos to submit a building application for a change of use to carry out assisted suicide.
The municipality of Nunningen in the Schwarzbubenland region of Solothurn: this is where Pegasos carries out assisted suicide.
Pegasos takes legal action
This has not happened to date.
Pegasos lodged an appeal against the building commission’s decision.
This was in turn rejected by the Solothurn Department of Construction and Justice (BJD). Pegasos then challenged the canton’s decision in the administrative court, which is why it is not yet legally binding.
This information comes from recently published responses from the Solothurn government to a motion by SVP cantonal councillor Stephanie Ritschard.
In its argumentation, the canton refers to a Federal Court ruling from 2023 on a conversion application from the canton of Lucerne. At the time, the court ruled:
‘The criterion for determining whether a measure is significant enough to be subject to the building permit procedure is whether, in general, according to the normal course of events, it has such important spatial consequences that there is a public interest or an interest of neighbours in prior control.’
For the canton of Solothurn, this is fulfilled in Roderis. Upon request, BJD secretary Regina Füeg writes: ‘The political enquiry shows that the Pegasos association in Nunningen assists people with assisted suicide and that it has not yet submitted a building application for this purpose.’
Neither the BJD nor the Nunningen building commission could prevent building owners from acting in violation of (building) law and, in particular, from building or changing the use of a property without first obtaining a building permit.
No one has prohibited assisted suicide
In Nunningen, Pegasos continues to accompany people to their deaths. ‘The Pegasos Swiss Association is continuing its activities as usual, especially since neither the authorities in Nunningen nor the Department of Construction and Justice of the Canton of Solothurn have prohibited the use of our property for assisted suicide,’ the company writes in response to an enquiry.
Due to the ongoing legal proceedings, Pegasos does not wish to comment further.
‘I think this will go all the way to the Federal Court,’ says Philipp Muster, mayor of Nunningen. Only time will tell whether it will actually come to that.
His assumption that Pegasos is refusing to apply for a change of use for fear of objections from the neighbourhood also remains unanswered.
