{"id":25914,"date":"2026-03-05T13:04:05","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T13:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/25914\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T13:04:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T13:04:05","slug":"swiss-parliament-rejects-neutrality-initiative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/25914\/","title":{"rendered":"Swiss parliament rejects neutrality initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"National<\/p>\n

National Council rejects new constitutional article on neutrality <\/p>\n

Keystone-SDA <\/p>\n

The Swiss House of Representatives has voted against enshrining permanent and armed neutrality in the Constitution. It has rejected the neutrality initiative and, unlike the Senate, does not want a counter-proposal.\n<\/p>\n

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March 5, 2026 – 13:54\n<\/p>\n

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After around eight hours of debate, the House voted against the neutrality initiative on Thursday by 128 votes to 60. Only the right-wing Swiss People\u2019s party sought to recommend a Yes vote to the electorate.<\/p>\n

The House also voted against the direct counter-proposal by 109 votes to 77 with two abstentions. The Swiss People\u2019s party and members of the Centre and Liberal Green party parliamentary groups voted in favour of it. This puts the House in line with the federal government, which rejected the neutrality initiative and decided against a counter-proposal.<\/p>\n

+ How the neutrality initiative could affect Swiss policy<\/a><\/p>\n

The initiative by Pro Switzerland and Swiss People\u2019s Party proponents calls for perpetual armed neutrality and a broad ban on sanctions to be written into the Constitution. Only sanctions decided by the UN Security Council could still be supported. Switzerland would only be allowed to cooperate with military or defence alliances in the event of an attack on Switzerland.<\/p>\n

The Senate rejected the initiative last summer because, although it wanted to enshrine permanent and armed neutrality in the Constitution, it did not want to restrict the possibilities for sanctions. Accordingly, it adopted an alternative article on neutrality as a direct counter-proposal. It has put the matter on the agenda again next week.<\/p>\n

Translated from German by AI\/jdp<\/p>\n

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We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at\u00a0english@swissinfo.ch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"National Council rejects new constitutional article on neutrality Keystone-SDA The Swiss House of Representatives has voted against enshrining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[101,11844,326,2143,100,69,103,102,41,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-25914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-switzerland","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-beat-neutrality","10":"tag-beat-swiss-politics","11":"tag-foreign-affairs","12":"tag-latest-news","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-production-type-deepl-autotranslation","15":"tag-sda-ready-to-publish","16":"tag-swiss","17":"tag-switzerland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116176713547755367","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}