Ten-million Switzerland

Today the voters of Switzerland voted on, among other things, a proposal initiated by the right-wingish Swiss People's Party (SVP), to limit the population growth in Switzerland. As I write, the first predictions of the result are appearing: roughly 45% 'Yes' to 55% 'No'. It would be a surprise if this changed much when the remaining votes are counted. At the moment I have no further information about turnout, but I'll add more information this evening, when things have settled down a bit.

Whatever happens in this case, the situation is the same with every complex and difficult referendum: the normal political processes have produced no result, so let's let the voters decide. What usually results from this die-roll is a near 50-50 split with a rounding error majority. We have discussed the FoS First Law of Referendums a number of times on this website. The situation is repeated today as the Swiss vote on the 'Ten million Switzerland' proposal: all the polls said the result is too close to call.

A stick of dynamite is wrapped up in the proposal: if the proposal is accepted and Switzerland attempts to set limits to the immigration system, the EU, playing hardball as usual, has made it clear that the result of the long and complex negotiations between the EU and plucky little Switzerland that have recently been completed will be dead in the water. A restriction on the free movement of people between Switzerland and the EU will violate that part of the agreement. The EU position on the framework is 'all or nothing', so the years of diplomacy will be dumped in the bin.

The SVP, the most popular political party in Switzerland, often demonstrates that its heart is in the right place but that its head is in a hole. Any attempt to reduce immigration or freedom of movement, however it is dressed up, will enrage the EU.

From its birth as an economic union, the EU has always pursued its ambition to become a single state in which national issues become irrelevant. A defining character of such a state is the free movement of its citizens across all of its territory. Even though Switzerland is not (yet) a member of the EU, it cannot be allowed to break the principle of free movement in any of its treaties with the EU.

Those opposing the proposal say that Switzerland will be unable to find enough low-level workers to staff the health service or the lower-paid and dirtier jobs that the Swiss themselves prefer not to do. In this, Switzerland resembles the great historical states such as the Athenians and the Romans: a small, cultivated, privileged and extremely rich class of citizens resting upon a broad base of slave labour. The Swiss pay their slaves, of course, and pay them comparatively well, but the parallel is not far from the truth.

Leaving aside the EU problem, the ramifications of this seemingly simple measure will be extremely complex. Once a population of 9.5 million is reached, numerous measures will automatically come into force: restriction on the acceptance of asylum seekers, restrictions on families joining existing migrants and the repatriation of provisionally accepted asylum seekers. Once the 10 million limit is reached, action must be taken to reduce the causes of whatever is causing this continued immigration.

A Gretchen-Frage is allowed: If the situation is so bad, why wait for the population to grow to 9.5 or 10 million? Why not take these measures now?

We can answer that. It is just a nice round number that is suited to political discourse. The 'measures' behind it are hardly going to change anything. Media hype in Switzerland and Europe has made this referendum out to be somehow epochal on the subject of immigration. It is not.

There is no mention of differential birth rates, for example; no mention of the despoilation of town and country caused by NetZero fanaticism, that money recycling scheme; no mention of the fact that the asylum seekers, who are the targets of the initial measure, make up only around a quarter of immigrant numbers per year – the 'regular' immigrants, the three-quarters, will only by affected when 10 million is reached, at which point some yet undefined renegotiation of the rules that allowed them in will be carried out, and the problem will be solved somehow, or not, as the case may be.

When some nice, hardworking Italian family with kids in Swiss schools are filmed being dragged screaming onto the bus to take them back 'home' – well, we'll see how well that plays out for Switzerland in the world's media.

Self-inflicted ruin

And the 'fright issue', the amount of concrete now covering once idyllic landscapes, is hardly anything to do with population growth. In my small village there are at this moment cranes visible on the construction sites of several housing developments in the village. These are apartment blocks with holiday flats for people who live in the lowlands and want a taste of the alpine life with an investment opportunity. No immigrant could afford one of these apartments, either to buy or to rent, and since there are no jobs on offer here anyway the only places to be are in the towns. Perhaps the effects of the 'overpopulation problem' seen by the SVP might be mitigated if the rich Swiss citizens limited themselves to just one place of residence.

Furthermore, local authorities view open fields and pastures as poor, loss-making things – missed opportunities. Commercial and residential property brings in income through taxes and fees and more income from taxes on the people who live and work in them. In the areas I know best, the motto is 'build, baby, build'.

A town near where I live had a perfectly respectable train and postauto station with a bit of alpine charm. The application of about 40 million CHF has turned it all into a concrete monstrosity with a six-story office building, with another block being built alongside. The only thing the original station was lacking was a giant boost to the circulation of money in the town. No immigrant or asylum seeker can be blamed for this.

In my region there is a special parliament of landowners, people described as 'land rich but cash poor'. A few trees from your woodlands might buy you a small Suzuki Swift (the economical vehicle of choice here); subsidised hay and grazing from your Heidi-perfect meadows will get you some chump change every year. But build on it and your cash poor state will be gone.

A few years ago, many Swiss were desperate to keep their natural environment intact, after seeing the concrete-is-king depradations the motorisation of the fifties and sixties wreaked upon their Heidi-world. That mood seems to have evaporated and that battle has been lost: nowadays, no day out with the kids in the Alps is complete without cable cars, slides, fright bridges, vie ferrate, grill places, ziplines, bike routes, cafes, restaurants, vehicle parking and so on. Secluded, high valleys are clearly in need of a hydro-electric scheme; remote, south-facing meadows and mountain screes are just lacking some solar panels.

Everything is being monetised and everything is turning into a construction project.

There is a fine gorge and historic viaduct not far from here. It is just lacking an income stream – a via ferrata and a zipline (and concrete block containing a ticket-house, a restaurant and a shop) are about to fix that problem. We can then just sit back and wait for the Chinese and Japanese tourists to bring us their money.

No asylum seekers or immigrants are responsible for such barbarism: the Swiss are quite capable of ruining their country without anyone else's help. And let's not forget: the immigrants are needed to do the building work that is beneath the dignity of the Swiss worker. Construction works are an immigration magnet, not a consequence of immigration.

From the early results so far in, it seems that the Swiss government has dodged a bullet: the precious framework agreement with the EU is still intact and the immigration business can proceed as usual.

Results

Bottom line: the proposal was defeated: 54.79% (1'808'916) to 45.21% (1'492'603), a majority of 316’313, meaning that 158’157 votes decided the matter. The turnout was 58.86%, which is in the upper band of the usual turnout. The fact is that around 40% of the electorate were busy doing other things this Sunday morning.

An important Federal referendum such as this requires not just the majority of the electorates votes, but a majority of something called the Ständemehr. To work out this 'canton majority', each canton counts the yes and no votes given by the voters in that canton; the winning side is taken to be the vote of the Canton. In this procedure, 10 cantons voted YES and 13 voted NO, so the referendum fulfilled the requirement that the electoral votes and the canton votes agreed: NO.

Supplementary information

The NZZ this afternoon put together a list of facts that I found interesting. Perhaps they might interest you, too. If you want the original German go to the link. My tweaks are in [square brackets].

• Switzerland [currently] has a population of 9.1 million people.
• 2,4 millionen people in the country do not have a Swiss passport. That is somewhat more than every fourth person in Switzerland.
• Italians make up the largest immigrant group with 351'000 people. In second place are the Germans with 334'000 immigrants.
• Since the introduction of freedom of movement in 2002, almost 2 million people have immigrated.
• Around 40% of the electorate has a immigration background.
• 235'000 people in Switzerland are asylum seekers or accepted for asylum.
• In Basel-City [sharing a corner with Germany and France] the proportion of foreigners is around 39%. More than the half of the 211'000 residents of the city cannot vote, either because they are not Swiss citizens or not yet 18 years old.
• The population of Zurich-City is 453'000. Of them, 32'700 are Germans. That corresponds to the population of a town such as Bad Nauheim [a town in Hesse, Germany, presumably chosen by the numbers kiddies at the Bundesamt für Statistik for its population number without knowing its particularly grim history during the Nazi era. Don't mention the war!] and represents 8% of the population of Zurich.

Update 15.06.2026

Some parts of this article were extended and reworked for clarity.