Swiss Citizens Reject a Proposal to End Free Movement

Swiss citizens voted overwhelmingly to reject a proposal brought by the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) in a referendum on September 27. The proposal would have ended Switzerland’s free movement agreement with the European Union and significantly curbed immigration. 61.7 percent of people voted against the initiative.

The SVP advocated for the proposal by arguing that Switzerland had lost its grip on immigration and needed to take back its sovereignty from the EU, while also protecting Swiss citizens from foreigners trying to take their jobs. SVP President Marco Chiesa expressed his disappointment with the result, while also promising that the party would not give up and continue to work to “take back control of immigration” in the future.

One of the only countries in Western Europe that is not a member of the EU, Switzerland has signed numerous treaties with Brussels over the past two decades, including ones that allow EU and Swiss citizens to work, travel, and live in each other’s respective countries. Other treaties concerning areas like trade, research, and transport, among others, would have also been nullified had the proposal passed, due to a so-called “guillotine clause.” This clause states that if the Swiss government cannot ensure the free movement of people between Switzerland and the EU, all of its other agreements and treaties are automatically invalidated.

Critics of the referendum said that the proposal would have harmed Switzerland’s relationship with the EU. Had the referendum taken effect, Switzerland would have been forced to negotiate new trade and immigration agreements with the EU; many have compared the SVP’s proposal to the UK’s decision in 2016 to leave the EU. Switzerland’s justice minister Karin Keller-Sutter even characterized the threat to the country’s free movement agreement as “worse than Brexit”.

Some also feared that Switzerland would lose out on millions of skilled workers who would have been forced to seek employment elsewhere had they no longer been allowed to live in the country.

A similar initiative to the one rejected on Sunday passed in 2014, which would have set immigration quotas for people coming into Switzerland. Once the referendum passed, however, the Swiss parliament implemented a less comprehensive version of the proposal to protect Switzerland’s relationship with the EU.

This “watered down” version of the referendum angered the SVP, who said that Parliament had “betrayed” the wishes of the people who voted in favor of the original referendum. After declining to hold another referendum to force a stricter implementation of its 2014 initiative, the SVP has suffered its latest defeat six years later. Despite this loss, the SVP has still raised the issue of immigration in Switzerland and the EU for another contentious debate, which is sure to continue amid the biggest threat to the EU since its inception due to the COVID-19 pandemic.