Switzerland will limit its population to ten million as part of a crackdown on immigration under plans put forward by the far-right People’s Party.
The Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which is the largest in the four-party ruling coalition, launched the anti-immigration initiative last year, which was signed by more than 115,000 residents and could be on the ballot as early as 2026.
The initiative requires that the population of those living permanently in Switzerland does not exceed ten million before 2050, after the country registered almost 9 million inhabitants for the first time in 2023.
As soon as the population reaches nine and a half million, the initiative demands that “temporarily admitted persons (foreigners) will not be granted a residence or establishment permit, Swiss citizenship or any other right of residence.”
After 2050, the initiative requires the Federal Council to set a new immigration limit based on excess births.
Swiss Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter called the SVP campaign “dangerous” and a threat to companies’ ability to attract top talent from abroad.
Representatives of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP UDC) next to a banner that reads in German: ‘No, 10 million from Switzerland! Sustainability initiative’ after the delivery of the signatures necessary for a Swiss popular initiative to vote to limit population growth in Switzerland, in Bern on April 3, 2024.
Swiss Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter called the proposal “dangerous” and a threat to companies’ ability to attract top talent from abroad.
She he said at a Bloomberg event: ‘When people talk about immigration or migration, what they are referring to is asylum seekers. They don’t really refer to qualified hospital staff, the doctors we need. We couldn’t work without them.”
The population limit will not differentiate between workers arriving from abroad and asylum seekers, which would clash with the needs of Swiss companies that depend on foreign talent.
While Keller-Sutter recognized that it was “the responsibility of Swiss companies to try to hire Swiss wherever possible”, the aging of the Swiss population made this more difficult.
In 2023, around 180,000 people emigrated to Switzerland, most of them for work.
More than one in four residents of Switzerland is a foreigner, which is one of the highest rates in Europe.
“Foreigners have contributed significantly to offsetting the shortage of skilled and unskilled labor,” the Swiss Federal Office for Migration told Bloomberg.
Professionals such as the CEO of Roche Holding AG, Thomas Schinecker, echoed this statement: people have to be hired, and if they cannot be found in Switzerland, they will have to be hired abroad.
The SVP, which has its roots as a farmers’ party in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, became a national force focused on mass migration of the opposition, closer ties with the European Union and any concession of Swiss independence.
The SVP comfortably sailed through the Swiss general election in October 2023 and holds two of the seven seats in the power-sharing government, but is often at odds with its three coalition partners.
Switzerland’s 246 parliamentarians elect the seven members of the government, whose seats are divided 2-2-2-1 between the four main parties.
The Federal Council government makes its decisions by consensus and with collective responsibility.
The UDC, the largest party in the lower house of parliament, has been pushing hard to restrict immigration, arguing that population growth risks becoming unmanageable. That has put pressure on the government to contain the numbers.
The Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which is the largest in the four-party ruling coalition, launched the anti-immigration initiative last year, which was signed by more than 115,000 residents and could be on the ballot as early as 2026 (file image of a Swiss voter casting his vote during the October 2023 federal election)
“We have received a very clear mandate from the Swiss population to put on the table issues that matter to them, such as illegal immigration,” said SVP president Marco Chiesa (pictured speaking with a woman during a campaign event in October 2023).
The SVP won 29 percent of the vote in the elections to the lower house of the Swiss parliament in October 2023.
“We have received a very clear mandate from the Swiss population to put on the table issues that matter to them, such as illegal immigration,” SVP president Marco Chiesa told national broadcaster RTS, visibly happy with the results.
The UDC was well ahead of the left-wing Social Democrats with 18 percent, while the center-right party El Centro and the right-wing party called FDP. The Liberals both finished on 14 per cent, with the three chasing parties largely deadlocked. .
Meanwhile, the Greens were unable to replicate their spectacular gains in the last election in 2019 and fell back four percentage points to finish fifth on nine per cent.
Switzerland, a wealthy European country of 9 million people, voted for the 200 seats in the lower house of parliament of the National Council and the 46 seats in the upper house of the Council of States.
The SVP’s election campaign focused on its favorite theme: the fight against “mass immigration” and the prospect of the Swiss population reaching 10 million.
Is it the ‘new normal’? Advertisements on social media, highlighting crimes perpetrated by foreigners, plunged them into a world of bloody knives, hooded criminals, fists, bruised faces and frightened women.
‘The situation in Switzerland is serious: we have massive immigration, we have big problems with people seeking asylum. The security situation is no longer the same as before,” said Thomas Aeschi, head of the UDC parliamentary group.
“Many people in Switzerland fear that the situation will get worse.”
The UDC has led every National Council election since 1999.
