ZURICH, April 29 (Reuters) – A slim majority of Swiss are backing an upcoming referendum proposal to limit Switzerland’s population to 10 million, \u200cand support for it is growing, an opinion poll showed on \u200cWednesday.<\/p>\n
The government has rejected the initiative backed by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) being put \u200bto voters on June 14, saying it will hurt cooperation with the European Union and damage the economy by restricting the labour market.<\/p>\n
But concern about rapid population growth and pressure on public infrastructure is encouraging many Swiss to support the \u200cproposal, the survey by \u2060media group Tamedia with newspaper “20 Minuten” and polling institute Leewas showed.<\/p>\n
Switzerland’s population is now more than 9 million, with official \u2060data showing foreign nationals accounted for more than 27% by 2024.<\/p>\n
The survey, conducted on April 22 and 23 and published in newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, showed 52% of 16,176 \u200brespondents in \u200bfavour of the proposal or leaning \u200bthat way, while 46% took the \u200copposite view. The rest gave no opinion.<\/p>\n
A previous poll from early March had shown 45% backing the initiative and 47% against it, the newspaper said, flagging the latest result as unusual in that Swiss referendum proposals generally lose support as the voting day comes closer.<\/p>\n
The poll had a margin of \u200cerror of plus or minus 3 percentage points.<\/p>\n
Under \u200bthe proposal, the permanent resident population must \u200bnot exceed 10 million before \u200b2050, and Switzerland should abandon its freedom of movement agreement \u200cwith the EU.<\/p>\n
Swiss lawmakers are debating \u200ba Swiss-EU deal struck \u200bin late 2024 to deepen economic ties, after a challenging 2025 that saw Switzerland unexpectedly hit with the highest U.S. trade tariffs in \u200bEurope.<\/p>\n
The SVP, Switzerland’s biggest \u200cparty, opposes closer integration with the EU, seeing it as a \u200bthreat to Swiss sovereignty and a source of excess regulation.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bDave Graham; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ZURICH, April 29 (Reuters) – A slim majority of Swiss are backing an upcoming referendum proposal to limit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[865,32212,2691,3153,32211,17,32213],"class_list":{"0":"post-57932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-switzerland","8":"tag-european-union","9":"tag-opinion-poll","10":"tag-population","11":"tag-swiss-people39s-party","12":"tag-swiss-referendum","13":"tag-switzerland","14":"tag-upcoming-referendum-proposal"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116490342497326566","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57932","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=57932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}