Switzerland rejected a proposal to cap its population at 10 million people, as warnings about economic damage if the radical measure was introduced outweighed concerns about immigration.<\/p>\n
In a national ballot on Sunday, 55% of Swiss voted against the idea, according to the government. Some 45% backed the initiative.<\/p>\n
The ballot on Sunday was the culmination of months of campaigning during which right-wing groups said Switzerland\u2019s rapidly rising population is causing overcrowding and straining the country\u2019s resources. The population isn\u2019t too far off their proposed limit, having risen by almost 2 million this century to 9.1 million.<\/p>\n
The cap would have marked an escalation in efforts by wealthy nations around the world to put strict curbs on immigration. The vote result will be a relief to businesses after multiple high-profile executives had warned that setting a fixed upper limit on the number of residents, never tried in a modern economy, would cut off vital access to foreign labor and hurt business and investment. The government and the majority of lawmakers in parliament had also opposed the idea.<\/p>\n
The concerns of firms like Roche Holding AG, Nestle SA and UBS Group AG had been heightened earlier this year when polls showed that proponents of the cap were ahead for large parts of the campaign. The \u2018yes\u2019 side lost that lead in the final polls, but remained close to 50%.<\/p>\n
Supporters led by the Swiss People\u2019s Party, or SVP, focused their push on sustainability, casting arrivals as stretching the country past its natural limits. They framed the population cap as a solution to high rents, crowded trains and overbuilding, messaging that connected with many people.<\/p>\n
Even with the defeat, the sizable support indicates ongoing unhappiness with the level of immigration, which will encourage the SVP and others to continue to try to find ways to introduce limits. That\u2019s been a recurring theme in Switzerland going back decades, where people have used the country\u2019s direct democracy system to repeatedly propose initiatives to stem the inflows of people.<\/p>\n
SVP lawmaker Thomas Matter, a key figure behind the population cap, said \u201ceven a narrow \u2018no\u2019 vote is a sensation\u201d because it was a \u201cDavid versus Goliath campaign \u2014 everyone against one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, support for the measure was much stronger than the SVP\u2019s share at the 2023 general election, where it came in first with 27.9% of the vote.<\/p>\n
The SVP\u2019s position aligns with the anti-immigration mood seen in multiple countries around the world and which politicians like Donald Trump in the U.S., Marine Le Pen in France and Alice Weidel of Germany\u2019s AfD have tapped to grow their support. It\u2019s led to many governments introducing new restrictions and tough crackdowns on migrants,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Switzerland rejected a proposal to cap its population at 10 million people, as warnings about economic damage if…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[2940,2790,2691,17],"class_list":["post-84545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-immigration","tag-jobs","tag-population","tag-switzerland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116753903542300072","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84545","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=84545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}