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The results of the two referendums held today in Switzerland are now known. The first was on Government proposals to make it more difficult for Swiss men to avoid compulsory military service by opting for the alternative of ‘civil service.’
The most important and controversial initiative was the Nachhaltigkeirsinitiative (sustainability) or Keine-10-Millionen Schweiz (No to a 10 million Switzerland) that was proposed and campaigned for by the Swiss People’s Party (SVP.) It was defeated 55:45.
The SVP is by far the strongest party in Switzerland with 62 of 200 seats in the National Council and is currently polling at around 29%. The referendum result showed that its position on immigration has an appeal beyond its own supporters.
Switzerland has a unique political system based on federalist autonomy for the 26 cantons. The SVP has two of the seven seats on the Federal Council which acts as the Executive for central administrative purposes.
Referendums are so important for the reason that while no single party can hope to have its core policies accepted at Federal level the citizens can adopt a proposal from one or several of those parties or through a petition which becomes Federal policy to be implemented through legislation if approved.
(As a matter of historical interest, the Éire Nua policy of the Provisional Republican movement -until it was ditched by those planning to abandon Irish nationalism in the late 1980s – was strongly influenced by Swiss federalism.)
What exactly was the SVP proposing ought to be the means to achieve a sustainable population capped at 10 million?
The wording of the proposal if successful was to insert a new Article 73a into the Federal Constitution mandating the Confederation and each of the federal cantons to “take measures for a sustainable population development, in particular for the protection of the environment and in the interest of the long-term preservation of natural living conditions, the performance of infrastructures, healthcare provision, and the Swiss social insurance systems.”
Under Article 197 (15), once the population exceeds 9.5 million, the Federal Council would take measures to ensure that no more people coming to Switzerland from abroad would receive residency or settlement permits, nor be allowed to apply for citizenship. If the population has exceeded the limit then the Federal Council will take measures to ensure compliance.
If compliance meant coming into conflict with international agreements such as the United Nations Global Compact of 2018 or the Agreement of 1999 between Switzerland and the EU on the ‘Free Movement of Persons’ then these shall be unilaterally terminated.
The reason why many Swiss people favour such a radical approach to immigration and demographics is that the current estimate is that almost one third of the population was born outside of Switzerland. Which makes the Swiss approach of great interest to people in Ireland who note the similarities.
As with our own referendums related to the EU, abortion, same -sex marriage and the 2024 family proposals, the entire Swiss establishment including the business organisations, trade unions, and main stream media were opposed.
As with Lisbon and Nice and abortion the Swiss people were subject to scaremongering with regard to the consequences of kicking against the traces. Yet it was still a close enough run thing.
The reasons why the SVP believe that the measures are necessary – and have obviously attracted the support of millions of Swiss citizens – have been summarised here by Roland Schmutz who is president of a Swiss organisation committed to sustainability from an environmental perspective. Which is one reason why support for the initiative outweighed polling support for the SVP.
Schmutz makes the point that even though Switzerland has remained determinedly outside of the EU, that bilateral agreements meant that “Switzerland also said yes to the free movement of people with the EU states. Since then it has been de facto impossible to control or even limit immigration to Switzerland.”
Which has had the consequence that the population is growing by 60 – 110,000 each year – a growth rate of 0.93%. Which has meant an increase of 1.5 million since 2002.
Ponder this: The average annual population growth rate in the Irish State since 2002 has been higher than Switzerland. It was 1.5% in the year to April 2025 and 1.9% in the year to April 2024. The population has grown by 1.6 million from 3.9 million in 2002 to 5.5 million. The bulk of that growth has been due to immigration.
Yet, there is no party in Leinster House which recognises that this is even unusual let alone that it might constitute a demographic crisis, a challenge to the stability and sustainability of Irish society, and least of all that it ought to demand urgent measures to correct it.
The SVP recognises that the main driver of this is work migration and in the Swiss context that mostly means people from EU states rather than from outside of the EU/EEA area. Around 15% of the Swiss workforce is from outside of the EU/EEA compared to more than 21% from the EU.
The comparative figures here are over 20% from outside of the EU/EEA (Swiss work permit system is much stricter than here) and around 12% from other EU states. So, the Irish state is on a much more radical trajectory than Switzerland which has had a sizeable non-national workforce for much longer than Ireland.
Schmutz also uses structural and environmental impacts in a way that you never find as part of the mainstream discourse on immigration and population growth here despite all their genuflection towards sustainability and carbon emission reductions and what not.
It is high time the ‘right’ took them on regarding this rather than parroting American oil company propaganda against any limits, environmental or demographic.
For example, in Switzerland traffic congestion is four times as bad as it was in 2000 and the equivalent of almost 8 football pitches every day are turned into housing development land to meet the demands of immigrants. Schmutz conclusion being: “We can see we are losing our home.”
If the Irish establishment even consider population growth to be an issue then they tacitly believe that abortion is one of the solutions. The SVP, on the other hand, is strongly pro-life and believes that Switzerland can sustain itself through its own families rather than population replacement.
Some of us can see how we are losing our home. At least the Swiss have attempted to do something about it rather than being gaslit by the threat to pensions and the promise of a foreign hand to wipe our collective arse in our dotage as a people.
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