The party, known in the French part of Switzerland as the Center Democratic Union and in the German part as the Swiss People’s Party, handed over 114,600 to the federal chancellery (the body that coordinates the work of the Swiss Federal Council, that is, the Government) this Wednesday. signatures in favor of the plan.
The number of subscribers is much higher than the 100,000 provided by law for an issue to be voted on by the population and signatures were collected in half the legal deadline.
The Swiss will therefore be able to vote on the text, which includes a denunciation of the free movement of people agreement signed with the European Union (EU).
The Swiss People’s Party already took this issue to a popular vote in September 2020, but a majority of 62% of Swiss people voted in favor of maintaining the agreement.
However, many months or even years can pass between the presentation of an initiative and its vote.
“From lack of security to daily traffic jams and rising health insurance premiums, all of our problems are linked to uncontrolled immigration. There is a solution to this: ‘The Sustainability Initiative2”, states the party on its website Internet.
The plan presented for the referendum proposes modify the Constitutionstipulating that “the permanently resident population of Switzerland must be less than 10 million people by the year 2050”.
“If the population permanently residing in Switzerland exceeds nine and a half million people before the year 2050”, the Government and parliament “will take measures, particularly with regard to asylum and family reunification, with a view to ensuring compliance with the established limit”, it is mentioned.
For the ultranationalist party, which reinforced its position as the country’s leader in October’s legislative elections, the definition of the permanently resident population is quite restricted: Swiss citizens living in the country and foreigners who have a residence permit of at least one year or who have already lived in Switzerland for at least 12 months.
If 9.5 million people already live in the country by the year 2050, the party proposes that “whoever is temporarily admitted [no território] cannot receive authorization to settle in the country or be naturalized” and that “family reunification is also restricted”.
Switzerland should also introduce exception or protection clauses in the international agreements to which it is party or to which it adheres, if these contribute to demographic growth.
If all this is not enough to meet the limit, Switzerland will have to terminate the agreement on the free movement of people with the EU as an emergency brake, argues the far right.
According to Switzerland’s national statistics service, at the end of June 2023, the country had 9,006,664 people (taking into account Swiss citizens, foreigners with or without permanent residence and asylum seekers).
The permanent resident population totaled 8,902,308 people, of which around a quarter were foreigners.
“Today there are too many foreigners and they are not the right foreigners“, stated the party president, Marcel Dettling, in a press release that accompanied the presentation of the initiative.
The statistics service also states that the migration balance will increase by 68,800 inhabitants in 2022 compared to the previous year.
The natural balance – births minus deaths – represented an increase of 7900 people.
The statistics service’s projections dated 2020 predicted that the population would reach 10.4 million inhabitants in 2050, placing the “minimum scenario” at 9.5 million and the “maximum scenario” at 11.4 million people.
