View from Geneva, Switzerland. Reuters file photo.<\/p>\n
Geneva: The Swiss government on Monday rejected a hard-right proposal to limit immigration to stop the population from hitting 10 million before 2050, arguing it would harm relations with the European Union.<\/p>\n
Swiss voters will have their say on June 14 on a proposal entitled “No to a Switzerland of 10 million residents”, championed by the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), the country’s biggest party.<\/p>\n
The SVP, which has its roots in rural politics, is opposed to the EU, mass immigration and any weakening of Swiss neutrality.<\/p>\n
The government said the popular initiative “endangers Switzerland’s prosperity, internal security and humanitarian tradition”.<\/p>\n
“It calls into question the proven bilateral path with the EU and creates additional uncertainty in an already uncertain time,” it said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Switzerland’s population has now passed nine million. The initiative says the Alpine nation’s permanent resident population must not exceed 10 million people before the year 2050.<\/p>\n
If it does, Switzerland would have to terminate international agreements blamed for driving population growth.<\/p>\n
From 2050 onwards, the government can adjust the limit to account for the surplus of births over deaths, according to the proposal.<\/p>\n
The government said the proposal would have “far-reaching consequences”, up to and including the free movement of people agreement with the EU.<\/p>\n
“The initiative would have a negative impact on relations with the EU. The initiative would thus call into question the bilateral path as a whole,” it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"View from Geneva, Switzerland. Reuters file photo. Geneva: The Swiss government on Monday rejected a hard-right proposal to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[599,41,17,598],"class_list":{"0":"post-33253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-switzerland","8":"tag-qatar","9":"tag-swiss","10":"tag-switzerland","11":"tag-the-peninsula"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116240626841615091","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33253","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=33253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}