Will Switzerland limit its population to 10 million inhabitants? | Radio-Canada

Switzerland, country of votes and referendums, will decide on Sunday on limiting its population to 10 million inhabitants. A question that deeply divides voters.

In the Swiss capital, Bern, the campaign for or against a proposal titled No Switzerland at 10 million! (sustainability initiative) is in its home stretch.

President of the UNIA union, Vania Alleva distributes leaflets for “no” outside the city center station. The initiative, which she considers xenophobic, promises things that are not true and […] will cause additional problemsaccording to her. The initiative tries to create a difference between Swiss employees and employees of different origins, explains Ms. Alleva.

Michaël Buffat, member of Switzerland’s leading party, the UDC, a party located on the far right of the Swiss political spectrum, refutes this analysis. His party, accustomed to petitions to trigger votes, is one of the rare parties to support this popular initiative against immigration. Both the Liberal-Radical Party (PLR) and the Socialist Party (PS), the Center, the Greens, the Green Liberals and the Swiss Evangelical Party (PEV) reject the initiative.

The population has grown completely crazy, says Mr. Buffat. Our goal is clearly to improve the quality of life of our fellow citizens, because today, we see the negative effect that immigration has on employment; people over 50 and young people have difficulty finding work. The SVP MP adds that the housing crisis is all the more serious.

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Migrants are the cause of many evils, according to the far right, hence this other vote on a question linked to immigration. But this time, the vote on No Switzerland at 10 million! (sustainability initiative) suggests going there in stages.

There is a first level at 9.5 million [d’habitants]where we ask the government to take measures in the area of ​​asylum and family reunification, and then, from 10 million, to renegotiate the free movement of peopleexplains Mr. Buffat.

The deadline for reaching the threshold of 10 million inhabitants would probably be 2050. This also concerns the European Union (EU), of which Switzerland is not a member. If the limit of 10 million is exceeded, Switzerland will have to denounce these agreements, including, after two years, the agreement withUE on the free movement of peopleindicates the text of the popular initiative.

Professor emeritus at the Institute of Political Studies of the University of Lausanne, Bernard Voutat underlines the origin of current immigration to Switzerland. The very large majority of this foreign population, more than 75%, is of European origin, French, Italian, German, and non-European nationals are a very small minority. And therefore, what is targeted here is also Switzerland’s foreign policy in connection with the agreements on the free movement of people between Switzerland and the European Union.

Un thème récurrent

In 2014, the UDC created a surprise by having 50.3% adopt a vote against mass immigration. Switzerland, which at that time had 8.1 million inhabitants, has since added 1 million people to its count.

Twelve years later, the anti-immigration discourse seems more assertive within the Swiss Confederation and does not escape the European trend, where a certain fed up among migrants has set in. Since the establishment in 2002 of the free movement of people between Switzerland andUEthe Swiss population increased by around 1.7 million people, mainly due to immigration.

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However, if the limitation to 10 million inhabitants is adopted, Switzerland would then have to renegotiate the bilateral agreements that it already applies with theUE.

This will open up quite considerable tensions between Switzerland and the countries of the European Union, explains Bernard Voutat, while the Confederation is in the middle of the process of adopting what are called bilateral agreements 3 with theUEagreements which do not really focus on the free movement of people, but on other aspects of the agreements that the UDC contests.

This tension could open a debate for the next five or six years regarding relations between Switzerland and the European Union, as well as with other countries.

Voters divided

Outside of large urban centers, voters seem divided between yes and no. Certainly not, says a resident of the German countryside [la Suisse de langue allemande, NDLR]. I am a foreigner myself, but I am integrated. I work, I pay my taxes, I respect the law, but as soon as there is a problem, they always say: “It’s the foreigners’ fault.”

In front of his tractor, a farmer declares on the contrary: I have nothing against foreigners, far from it, he said, but we have to set a limit, at a given moment, because the social protection system is completely saturated because of them.

But is this really a divide between urbanity and rurality? Between progressives and conservatives? Not so fast, according to Jean Marc Cloux, member of the fourth generation of a farming family. On June 14, he will say no to a population limited to 10 million.

In my opinion, we don’t solve any problem with that, he says. We vote too much to try to modify a constitution, which is a fundamental act which governs how we must live, and not that we must put horns on cows or not horns on cows, in addition to initiatives which are inapplicable.

His son Arnaud adds. This is not how we are really going to solve the problems, especially since we see that Switzerland is aging and that additional manpower will still be needed.

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A risk of labor shortage

The result of this vote with complex consequences seems unpredictable, according to Cesla Amarelle, professor of constitutional law, European law and migration law at the University of Neuchâtel. There is an anti-migrant phenomenon and then, at the same time, the figures show that both in the field of social security and in the field of work, let’s say, there is a strong promotion of the management of the cultural diversity that migrants have brought to a society.

Ms Amarelle believes that the risk of a shortage of employees is real if the free movement of Europeans is threatened. If we do not have the status which allows family recovery because of the measure, for example, an engineer will not come to work in Switzerland if he cannot come with his family and his children.explains the professor.

She believes that if Switzerland makes the status more precarious, it is clear that there will be much less attractiveness, and therefore that the country will enter into a real debate on the question of labor shortage.

As Professor Bernard Voutat explains, whatever the result, anti-immigration sentiment is on the rise. The specificity of Switzerland is the precocity of this speech, but which resembles in every way that of the National Rally in France or the AFD in Germany.

The rare polls do not allow us to anticipate the result. In French-speaking Switzerland, more than 60% of those questioned reject the initiative; German-speaking Switzerland is divided into two camps of almost identical size; and the Italian-speaking part goes against the general movement, by supporting the proposal of a limit of 10 million inhabitants.

Popular initiatives that are sometimes surprising

Switzerland being the country of direct democracy, popular initiatives, votes and referendums can sometimes be surprising.

Thus, voters have already had to decide on the match monopoly (1895), on the ban on absinthe (1908), on a vote for 12 Sundays per year without motor vehicles or planes (1978), or, more recently, on the initiative for horned cows (2018).