Swiss Voters Reject Proposal To Cap Population At 10 Million (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0183881980
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/06/15/0546236/swiss-voters-reject-proposal-to-cap-population-at-10-million
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/14/switzerland-referendum-population-cap-svp
> Voters in Switzerland have [1]rejected an unprecedented far-right proposal to cap the country's population at 10 million in a divisive referendum dubbed "the Swiss Brexit." Some 54.79% of voters were against the proposal by the Swiss People's party (SVP) and 45.21% were in favor. Turnout was 58.86%. A different outcome would have obliged the Swiss government to limit the population, currently 9.1 million, to 10 million by 2050, enacting tough restrictions on family reunification, residency permits and asylum if the number had reached 9.5 million before that date.
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> Under the proposals, if the threshold of 10 million people was exceeded before 2050, the Swiss government would have been obliged to withdraw from the country's free movement agreement with the EU -- ending its access to the bloc's single market. The SVP, which has the most seats in parliament, has for years fueled anti-immigrant sentiment, especially concerning workers from neighboring EU countries. The party had insisted that a so-called "sustainability initiative" was needed to address the increase in population, which it argued was putting pressure on Swiss infrastructure, housing, social programs, natural resources and way of life.
"Voters were worried about negative consequences for Switzerland's relationship with the EU and for the labour market," said Urs Bieri, from the polling firm GFS Bern. "People are also worried about things like having enough care and health workers. Also, there's a feeling that in the current international environment it's not sensible for a small country to do this."
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/14/switzerland-referendum-population-cap-svp
Re: (Score:1)
No, there absolutely aren't any such places in England and Germany.
Getting what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
We know what it looks like when a country's population no longer grows. It's not pretty.
Japan is Exhibit A. Younger people are forced to pay more taxes to take care of a disproportionately large elderly population. Elder care becomes more and more expensive, and difficult to find at all.
Countries that welcome immigrants are able to increase the tax base, and supply critical labor that locals don't want to do, including taking care of the elderly.
Re: (Score:2)
It is even worse for Switzerland. Switzerland is a high-tech nation that does not have enough STEM personnel, because they do not educate enough. Hence they need a massive influx of engineers, MDs, etc. Many (not very smart) Swiss citizens complain, for example, that many MDs are not Swiss, completely overlooking that the alternative is not having enough. Dumb people that cannot think one step ahead is unfortunately also a fact of life in Switzerland....
Tokenising the swiss (Score:2)
I was looking forward to tokenising the Swiss citizen. There would be fewer of them than bitcoins and not growing in populations, so by the same logic bitcoinETF use they would appreciate. And they are even backed by gold. Dang.. I'd have made a fortune.
Sanity did prevail (Score:2)
And it was both votes ("Staenderat" and individuals) that rejected it. It would have to win both to become law.
The whole thing is right-wing conservative assholes that cannot do actual solving of problems and hence try to compete with simplistic proposals. Fortunately, enough people saw how badly this idea was thought out and how massive negative the consequences would have been (loss of basically all treaties with the EU if the limit were to trigger).
Re: (Score:2)
This has nothing at all to do with Moslems.
I'm not sure when things changed, but up until around 20 years ago it was quite difficult to move to Switzerland - you had to have some job skills that Swiss nationals didn't have, at least in sufficient quantity. Then they made an agreement with the EU which granted them access to the EU market (and vice versa) with free movement of population in both directions, I knew several people - mostly in Finance - who then moved to Zürich, Brits, Germans and French.