On 14 June, the Swiss people voted on a referendum to limit the Swiss population below 10 million. With the vote landing 45.2% in favour to 54.8% against, mainstream media reported voters “overwhelmingly rejected the proposal.” The truth is more complicated, and a sad reflection on the meaning of sovereignty in today’s interconnected world.

by Jane O’Sullivan

Switzerland has one of the highest proportions of immigrants in the developed world, around 31% of permanent residents. Despite considerable emigration, net immigration has risen substantially since it entered a free movement agreement with the European Union (EU) in 2002, and particularly since joining the Schengen Area in 2008, removing border controls. In a post-Covid surge, population growth has climbed above 1.3 per cent per annum, four or five times the European average.

The results are a familiar story: housing unaffordability, long commutes on grid-locked roads or crammed trains, green space disappearing under new housing developments, and a community of strong and proud traditions feeling lost among strangers.

Switzerland’s famously hands-on democracy requires the government to put to referendum any proposal that gathers more than 100,000 supporters. This year’s population referendum was not the first: in 2014, a referendum to re-introduce immigration quotas won but was not implemented because the EU threatened an effective trade blockade, refusing to reinstate any of the treaties governing trade or cooperation on research, policing and cross-border traffic if the free movement agreement was withdrawn. The next attempt hoped to avoid this backlash by proposing a population cap, with future population thresholds triggering a requirement for government action, so that there would be no need for immediate changes to treaty conditions. This proposal was taken to the vote in April 2024. However, it lost after an intense political and media campaign threatening economic chaos. This year’s referendum is essentially the same as the 2024 proposal.

Hence, this year’s loss was not surprising. Again, a barrage of media campaigns claimed the policy would destroy Switzerland’s prosperity and cause chaos in the country’s relationship with the EU. The referendum was proposed by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), ensuring the centre and left parties opposed it as xenophobic radical nationalism and therefore morally outrageous.

Yet, from an outsider’s perspective, it was the rhetoric against the proposal that comes across as strident and irrational catastrophism. The referendum modestly sought to reinstate Switzerland’s right to control immigration, something most sovereign states take for granted. Titled ‘No to a Switzerland with 10 million! (Sustainability Initiative)’, it emphasised the ultimate unsustainability of perpetual growth. It required no immediate action, but if the permanent resident population (currently around 9.1 million) exceeded 9.5 million before 2050, the Federal Council and Parliament would have needed to tighten controls on asylum and family reunification. If it had reached 10 million they would have needed to renegotiate international agreements allowing the free movement of people.

However, the result suggests Switzerland has given up control of its borders, unless it is willing to call the EU’s bluff and risk damaging retribution.

Bullied

After choosing not to join the EU in a very narrowly lost referendum in 1992, Switzerland entered into a number of bilateral treaties with the EU, effective since 2002, to govern trade, road and air traffic, cooperation in science and policing, and the free movement of people. Cunningly, the EU made these treaties interdependent: ending any one component voids all of them. This gives the EU enormous leverage over any change proposed by Switzerland. The 2014 referendum made it clear that the EU administration has no intention of letting the Swiss decide their own fate. It will exert all its power of economic sanction and administrative upheaval rather than re-negotiate terms for migration. It immediately excluded Switzerland from research grant schemes and suspended trade talks, threatening full exclusion from the European Common Market.

In 2021, the EU again demonstrated its preparedness to punch down against autonomy. When the Swiss Federal Council resisted the EU’s proposed changes to the framework agreement for the bilateral treaties, the EU again excluded Switzerland from the Horizon Europe and Erasmus research projects. So, the EU is free to change the terms of their “bilateral” treaties but Switzerland is not. Its decision to remain independent of the EU has ironically made it effectively a second-class EU state, beholden to the EU’s dictates but without a voice or vote in the European Parliament or European Commission.

Switzerland is not the only country to have tested the EU’s tolerance. Brexit was a salutary lesson for any country seeking to wrest autonomy back from the EU. The subsequent economic suffering endured by the UK was almost entirely due to the EU deliberately seeking to make Britain pay for its disloyalty – it did not, as many pro-EU advocates imply, demonstrate the foregone economic advantages of being in the EU. Britain’s ongoing malaise, however, is of its own making, squandering the benefit of reduced immigration from Europe by opening the floodgates to immigration from elsewhere.

If the EU were truly about collaboration and mutual support of nations, it should happily support a democratic decision on migration control. It need not affect any other aspect of interaction with Switzerland (or Britain, for that matter). Removing the free movement rule does not mean nobody is allowed in, only that Switzerland reserves the right to restrict numbers and to be selective about who can become resident. The EU’s intransigence is more consistent with the view that its true purpose is dismantling sovereignty in the interest of oligarchs seeking unfettered access to investment opportunities and the ability to restrain wages by flooding labour markets.

Gaslit

Far from fostering genuine debate, the political and media commentary on the referendum was strident in its catastrophism. Joseph de Weck in The Guardian asked “Is Switzerland tired of prosperity?” claiming a Yes vote “would dismantle the openness that has made the country rich.” (For a country most famous for money-laundering, it’s hard to see how local labour supply helped.) He rejects as “incoherent” “the SVP’s framing of immigration as the culprit for strained infrastructure” without offering an alternative explanation. Many of Switzerland’s most successful companies were founded by immigrants, he enthuses. Such an argument only stands if the proposal was to prevent immigration entirely, which is far from the case.

Commentary typically paints migration as highly skilled and filling genuine labour shortages. According to a Swiss government website, “public institutions like hospitals and care homes often recruit the skilled workers they need from the EU.” In reality, aged care workers are overwhelmingly African and Asian, typically employed part time so the employer can avoid paying into their pension funds. They might work for two or three employers, each job under the threshold for pension payments. This sort of second-class worker is a potential time-bomb as they will retire with few savings to contribute to their own care, so the government will pick up the tab. Effectively, cheap migrant labour is a subsidy to the employer, ultimately paid by all tax-payers.

Scaremongering about population ageing is as rife in Switzerland as in other low-fertility countries. Media conjures images of aged care homes without carers or whole societies where essential services are collapsing for want of workers. Never mind that ageing has not reduced the proportion of workers anywhere. Instead, the tightening labour market reduced unemployment and boosted wages and conditions for low-income workers.

Added to the economic misrepresentations is the constant association of migration control with “far right”, racism and hatefulness toward foreigners. If Swiss left-wing and centrist parties agree on anything, it is that the SVP is beyond the pale. Despite SVP having more seats in parliament than any other party, the mainstream media belittles a large share of voters by insisting all good people should shun everything they stand for. It is difficult to hold rational discussion when virtue demands disengagement. The environmental and social justice benefits of population stabilisation or contraction remain unexplored.

Yet even left-wing commentary reported the reason for the negative result was not a majority embracing high immigration and happy-clappy globalism, but resigned that it was the lesser evil, “despite widespread concerns about population growth.” Aljazeera reported, “voters prioritised economic stability and the country’s ⁠ties with the European Union over immigration concerns.”

A Swiss polling firm is reported saying, “Voters were worried ‌about negative consequences for Switzerland’s relationship with the EU and for the labour market. People are also worried about things like having enough care and ‌health workers.”

There you have it: bullied by threats from the EU and gaslit about skills shortages and the need for care workers. Even so, more than 45% of voters still voted for the population cap, prepared to take on the EU to reassert their sovereignty.

It’s unlikely this vote settles the issue. As the problems caused by rapid immigration continue to intensify and the promised benefits remain elusive, the question will be brought back to the people. With sentiments toward immigration hardening throughout Europe, perhaps a fairer hearing will be possible next time around.