“Limitation Initiative”: Voters Clearly Reject SVP Initiative – News

The Swiss electorate wants to maintain the free movement of people between Switzerland and the EU.

• The SVP’s so-called limitation initiative clearly failed at the polls.
• People are in favor of maintaining the free movement of people in the EU.

The free movement of people between Switzerland and the EU has been in place for 18 years, and continues to be. The majority of voters and cantons reject the SVP initiative. The largest party wanted to get immigration under control. With the so-called “limitation initiative”, however, it once again fought almost alone on a broad front.

In some cantons, however, the matter was greeted with open ears. The border canton of Ticino accepted the initiative, with 53.1 percent of votes in favor. The canton of Appenzell Innerhoden accepted the initiative even more clearly, with 54.3 percent. Also in the canton of Glarus there was a strict yes.

The approval in Ticino is no surprise. It was expected even more clearly, says RSI editor Mario Carnevale. Wage pressure, youth unemployment and security are big problems in the southern canton.

The so-called limitation initiative was rejected with particular clarity in the cantons of Neuchâtel and Basel-Stadt, each with more than 70 percent of the votes against.

The SVP leadership was not afraid in the vote. She never tires of emphasizing that only if the initiative is affirmative will the environment, the labor market, social security and infrastructure in Switzerland be protected.

According to the initiators, the free movement of people only causes problems. “Mass immigration” leads to overcrowded trains, increasingly concrete and endless traffic jams. The party does not want a “Switzerland of 10 million”, so immigration must be controlled without freedom of movement.

Termination within twelve months

Specifically, the popular initiative “For moderate immigration (limitation initiative)” asked the Federal Council to suspend or terminate the agreement on free movement of people within a period of twelve months through negotiations with the EU.

In this case, the guillotine clause would have been applied: the other six bilateral agreements would also have automatically expired. The initiative would also have prohibited Switzerland from assuming new international legal obligations that grant foreigners freedom of movement.

Great damage to the economy is feared

The Federal Council, all the other major parties and the main business associations rejected the initiative. Without bilateral agreements, without stable relations with the EU, by far the most important trading partner of Switzerland, jobs would inevitably be lost, was the tenor of the opponents. The initiative is poison at a time of great economic uncertainty.

Damage if bilateral agreements ceased to exist

According to a federal report, if Bilaterals I were to cease to exist, Switzerland’s gross domestic product would be five to seven percent lower in less than 20 years than if the agreements continued. Furthermore, various studies make clear that the free movement of people hardly displaces local workers and that social services are not burdened by the free movement of people.