Switzerland to vote on capping population at 10M

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/world/europe/switzerland-to-vote-on-capping-population-at-10-million.html

by bookofjoe • 5 months ago

52 138 5 months ago

bookofjoe2• 5 months ago

krthat1• 5 months ago

"Anti foreigner sentiment"? Dear NYT, try to find an apartment in the EU or Switzerland. At best, you will get a furnished (to circumvent rent caps), overpriced 30 square meter dump that takes up 40% of your net salary.

Once that problem is solved, we can talk about "sentiments".

snowpid• 5 months ago

im not sure about Switzerland, but there are areas in Germany, where you can.

spwa42• 5 months ago

I doubt that very much. Sure there's places where the rent is less, but there's no jobs there. So a very low rent will still be over 40% of your pay (ie. nothing)

ozlikethewizard• 5 months ago

Not middle of nowhere Germany either, rents in Berlin are shockingly reasonable from an outside Germany perspective

alephnerd3• 5 months ago

Maybe work on changing zoning laws instead of pandering to farmers and rural cantons?

hypeatei2• 5 months ago

It's much easier to blame the out group for your issues. The US currently has a sizable percentage of people that believe ICE deportations are going to lower housing prices, for example.

toomuchtodo4• 5 months ago

Citizens can choose to prioritize quality of life over maximizing housing stock to increase the domestic population. “We’re all full up.” It is their country after all, it is their choice. Those who want in are not stakeholders nor have a vote.

lazide• 5 months ago

Why would they want to do that?

happytoexplain8• 5 months ago

You're stating this option like it's obvious and simple, but this all just amounts to choosing which of multiple ways to make one's country worse. While growth/immigration has macro-economic positives, it's not infinitely positive, so it doesn't justify ever-denser housing and ever-increasing cultural sub-dividing forever - and as people become less happy, they care less and less about "how the economy is doing".

Of course, nobody can agree on where the line is, or escape the shoulder-rubbing with racism and classism while trying to argue where the line is.

pydry2• 5 months ago

Social housing programs have historically doubled or tripled housing construction.

Has changing zoning laws historically ever boosted housing construction by more than 10%?

OtomotO• 5 months ago

The problem is that most people want to live in cities for whatever reason and, lo and behold, if one wants to buy regional and biological the grain has to grow somewhere on the countryside.

But yeah, most people have lost touch with where food comes from originally, before it's in the shelves of your supermarket.

outside12342• 5 months ago

So what you are saying is that these places have not built enough housing. That sounds like the actual problem, not the population size.

api3• 5 months ago

“We will do literally anything to make housing more affordable except build more of it.”

Forget where I first saw that but it’s absolutely true.

The left will try rent control, subsidies, taxes and prohibitions against speculation, banning AirBnB, etc. The right will try mass deportations and population caps.

Nobody will build more housing because that would work, and home owners are incentivized not to do anything that would work, and homeowners vote in much larger numbers.

The problem won’t be solved until renters out vote homeowners and until everyone who wants more affordable housing stops advocating the solutions that will not work.

rendang• 5 months ago

I support YIMBYism for ones own countrymen but I don't see the need to fit as many people as possible in your country. A Switzerland with 25 million people will be a worse place to live regardless of whether the housing supply keeps up

thrance5• 5 months ago

Sure, apartments in Paris are overpriced because of immigrants buying them all. Fuck, that is so stupid. The same people parroting this anti-foreigners hate are also completely indifferent to slumlords profiteering on housing, and will support politicians who consistently side with landlords and homeowners over tenants and first buyers. Housing has never become more affordable under a right wing government.

happytoexplain8• 5 months ago

This is a particularly egregious case of the "same people" fallacy.

donkeybeer10• 5 months ago

Immigrants must have an immense power over these countries if they are able to forcibly prevent the construction of new housing.

alephnerd3• 5 months ago

Walk around Google Geneva (edit: doh, Zurich - my coffee hasn't kicked in), Novartis Basel, or CERN and count how many "Swiss" nationals there are. A large portion are white collar immigrants from CEE or Asia, or French commuters.

Switzerland's comparative advantage as an innovation hub was due to it's permissive capital structures and historic openness to white collar immigration.

All that a rule like this does is incentivize moving jobs out of Switzerland. Heck, look at UBS axing 3,000 jobs across all functions in CH and shifting them to India [0] last Wednesday.

If UBS, Novartis, Google Geneva (edit: doh, Zurich - my coffee hasn't kicked in), etc cannot continue to attract employees they will leave, and given the extremely friendly FTAs and BITs Switzerland [1] has signed either unilaterally or part of the EFTA, it's extremely easy.

Heck, look at how Syngenta went from being a Swiss major that employed thousands in Switzerland to a Chinese major that is about to IPO in Hong Kong [2] in just a decade.

Already 1 out of every 3 Swiss businesses is planning to shift out of Switzerland (primarily to the EU and US, but Asia comes up as well) [3].

Switzerland doesn't have the same comparative advantage in finance 40 years ago (why Basel when I can go to London, Frankfurt, or Amsterdam) nor manufacturing (why CH and not DE or CN) and this kind of ruling puts it's entire life sciences industry - the last industry within which CH remains a global leader - in jeopardy.

Additionally, Switzerland is not in the EU and is dependent on the EU-Switzerland FTA. If this were to pass, it would violate that FTA with Switzerland's largest trading partner. The EU can severely push back against CH, and France+Germany+Italy would very much support such retaliation as it would help incentivize Swiss businesses to shift out of Switzerland.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/ubs-plans-hire-3000...

[1] https://www.seco.admin.ch/seco/en/home/Aussenwirtschaftspoli...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/syngenta-targets-up-10-b...

[3] https://www.thelocal.ch/20251023/swiss-companies-set-to-relo...

KellyCriterion10• 5 months ago

Swiss comp advantage started in WWII when they were used to exchange Nazis gold into other currencies - this gave them a topstart for the economic period after the war since they were perfectly connected globally and they understood to scale & keep this advantage for long time. Maybe its fading a little bit nowadays

alephnerd3• 5 months ago

Sure in finance (and even then it has been overshadowed by London, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam by the 2000s), but not really in innovation industries like the Life Sciences - which has historically been Switzerland's strongest niche and a major reason for Switzerland's modern success.

This was largely due to the success of Biogen in the 1980s which helped link American biopharma IP with the Swiss ecosystem along with a fairly permissive PR program for skilled foreign nationals.

Edit: cannot reply

Roche and Lanza

Roche and Lanza would have remained CDMOs if it wasn't for Biogen bringing an entire generation of Harvard and MIT Biopharma researchers to Switzerland in the 1980s and helped build an ecosystem for therapeutics and biopharma R&D.

Much of Roche's biopharma and therapeutics leadership and IP is derived from Biogen alumni.

spwa42• 5 months ago

To be honest during WWII, Switzerland was surrounded by the Nazis. Literally. On all sides, and learned a harsh lesson on not just the importance of military readiness but also economic resilience. So they took what they could get.

abc03• 5 months ago

This seems a highly biased view. You could also say that because Switzerland wasn’t war raged they had a had start.

jeffbee3• 5 months ago

That analysis starts too late. Swiss advantages arose from ignoring other countries' patent laws in the 1850s.

ahtihn2• 5 months ago

What is Google Geneva? They're in Zurich.

KellyCriterion10• 5 months ago

Why shouldnt they be allowed to make a cap at 10M?

shafyy2• 5 months ago

Because it's very likely against the Swiss constitution

KellyCriterion10• 5 months ago

Please elaborate and send me the link to the relevant www.parlament.ch docs :)

Youden3• 5 months ago

"Against the Swiss constitution" doesn't really make sense here. This is a popular initiative; if accepted, it amends the Swiss constitution. Here's the text: https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/vi/vis555t.html

The only way you could argue an initiative is "against the Swiss constitution" in my opinion would be if it runs afoul of the rules: https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/1999/404/en#tit_4/chap_2

Unless you want to argue that this violates the mandatory provisions of international law, I don't think you have an argument. The text of the amendment specifically clarifies that any of the actions it mandates on parliament have to adhere to the mandatory provisions of international law, so I don't think that's an avenue you can pursue.

FranklinJabar2• 5 months ago

Switzerland is a state. Talking about what they're "allowed" to do is just meaningless.

But, it does seem like a terrible place to live. I fear for the immigrants who form the basis of the economy.

gpt5• 5 months ago

Switzerland is consistently rated among the best places to live in almost any metric.

toshinoriyagi• 5 months ago

I don't think immigrants make up the basis of the Swiss economy. Looking at their demographic data[1], it was pretty strongly European dominated for a very long time, and is still ~80% European.

When people talk about immigrants in this context, I don't think they mean people from the US, but lower socioeconomic asylum-seekers and refugees etc. from the middle-east.

It definitely seems their economy was built on European labor, which I believe the vast majority of European countries were.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Switzerland#Pe...

Herring2• 5 months ago

Western societies are aging. If you don't take in immigrants (which is basically the government becoming the far right), you're on a timer. Your economy will slow, insecurity will rise, and the far right will surge anyway. It's happening to Japan.

As far as I can tell, the problem is inequality leading to widespread insecurity because the rich buy up housing. The right wing has no solutions. What you probably need is Vienna-style public housing and very high taxes to reduce inequality and fund social services. But then the rich always threaten capital flight to tank your economy.

Mountain_Skies2• 5 months ago

"Line must go up" is such a death wish and I don't see how people who consider themselves "green" can also preach the line must go up mantra. Yes, there are consequences from a shrinking population. There are also consequences from a growing one, especially one that is cultivated with no regard to anything other than maximizing the absolute number. But I guess if you're one of the people who can benefit from the line going up while alive, it doesn't matter what happens to the world once you're gone. Just make sure that line is doing the right thing while you're breathing and that's all that matters.

Gagarin1917• 5 months ago

The system they’ve crafted relies on having enough of a working population to pay for the older benefit-receiving population. Their benefits are so large and unwieldy, they know the whole thing will fall apart if they don’t find a way to fund it.

They see this as a threat to their entire way of life.

Herring2• 5 months ago

You won't get anywhere if your solution to climate change is widespread poverty and insecurity. In fact from what I can tell the more secure societies are more likely to push green policies (comparing Europe vs US/China). Intuitively I have more capacity to entertain vegetarianism if I'm not working 80hrs per week. Anyway the rich are emitting way more carbon than everyone else so taxing them should be the first priority, not austerity.

jeffbee3• 5 months ago

Switzerland obviously isn't anti-immigrant. Really nobody is from there. Nearly half of their population immigrated. But the SVP wants selected varieties of white immigrants, nobody any darker skinned than David Hasselhoff, certainly not anyone from east of Vienna (the SVP had an entire anti-Kosovar campaign).

fakedang2• 5 months ago

My neighbours are a white Dutch couple who have been living in Switzerland for close to 3 decades, but were still denied citizenship at the cantonal level. Every time, it failed at the cantonal level alone.

The co-founder of Bitcoin Suisse too has been struggling to obtain Swiss citizenship.

So again, it's not a question of skin colour or wealth, but a far deeply rooted sense of racism and superiority, and general disdain the SVP and their supporters hold for anyone who isn't German Swiss.

ranguna• 5 months ago

Good for them, I hope the vote will reflect everyone's wishes.

_diyar2• 5 months ago

Context as a Swiss person: One of the strongest political parties in Switzerland today is the SVP (german acronym) which is right-wing. It has won a strong plurality in national elections for easily a decade.

This vote, however, does not stem from the federal (or even state-level) government, but instead is an initiative launched by a group of conservative politicians which happen to be part of the SVP party. The Swiss Federal Council (executive body) has come out against this initiative.

Switzerland has a form of direct democracy, where any group of individuals can propose a change in laws and if they collect 100k signatures (within 18 months) this proposed text will be voted on by the whole country. Here is a list of all referendums, a subset of which are these initiatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swiss_federal_referend...

These initiatives are a frequent feature in Swiss politics, and not necessarily indicative of broadly popular legislation. In fact, whether or not an initiative is accepted is heavily correlated with the support it receives form the federal government. Give that they oppose it, I would bet against this passing.

jeffbee3• 5 months ago

SVP "which is right-wing" may not convey the degree and nature of that alignment. Just search for "SVP propaganda posters" or read https://www.dw.com/en/far-right-party-violated-anti-racism-l.... When I lived in Switzerland I was pretty shocked by how "out" the hard right was. It was as if having been neutral in WW2 not enough of their homegrown fascists got shot, and they still had plain old Nazis kicking around, holding offices and passing laws.

fooker2• 5 months ago

plain old Nazis kicking around, holding offices and passing laws

This happened everywhere, to an extent that is genuinely surprising to me.

Pretty much every German company and government position post WW2 is in this category. And funnily enough, a good number of American organizations.

Chile's president is the son of a Nazi.

Japan went on operating business as usual except for the invading China part.

subpixel• 5 months ago

Two possibilities could be true at the same time.

There might be a population limit that a country wants to set, based on effects of population visible in employment, housing , transportation, and social services.

There might be a motivation to curb immigration from certain parts of the world, based on cultural factors and aligning more with one side of the political spectrum than the other.

techie128• 5 months ago

So how does this work in practice? Once the population reaches 10M, people can't have kids?

lotsofpulp• 5 months ago

Based on Switzerland’s total fertility rate of 1.3, the population increases only due to immigration, so controlling the flow of immigration is all that would need to happen.

maxerickson• 5 months ago

Maybe they have to take a bounty first.

foobarian• 5 months ago

I'm going to guess that having too many kids would be a happy problem for them (and most gentrified Western societies)

retired4• 5 months ago

Will they use FIFO or LIFO to enforce the 10M?

And will those people be exiled or taken out to the back?

bee_rider• 5 months ago

Based on the general behavior of humanity: probably a priority queue/heap.

hmokiguess2• 5 months ago

I support that. If you tried doing the inverse, for example, migrate to an Islamic country and bring over Christianity there, you would not be welcomed at all. I’m an expat and one thing I’ve learned is to integrate myself with the culture of the country that adopted me, I believe this shows respect and that I am aligned with its values and principles.

dieortin2• 5 months ago

A huge majority of foreign residents in Switzerland come from Christian countries, so I don’t know what your point is.

Gud• 5 months ago

Why is this down voted?

I live in Switzerland(not from here, migrated) and this vote is not specifically against muslims.

poly2it• 5 months ago

Do you truly believe Switzerland is at risk of an Islamic invasion? How do people on a platform such as HN fall for such obviously falsifiable statements? The initiative is obviously part of the global right-wing populist trend. Countries in the EU are dependent on immigration for maintaining their economies and public infrastructure as the population ages. I'm not Swiss, but the current government in Sweden has been going through with similar anti-criminal/anti-bad-immigrant (racist) politics and rethoric for four years now. As a result, there are now elderly care centers in parts of the country where 25% of all personnel have been expelled, children and even babies are taken back to their "home countries" without their parents and major domestic industry organisations are turning on the politicians they have fostered as the detrimental economic policies are killing low-wage industries in Sweden.

KellyCriterion10• 5 months ago

Curious: Do you live in Switzerland in 2025 / 2026?

hmokiguess2• 5 months ago

I think they have a right to decide how they want their values and culture to be defined, and they can choose to start enforcing those at any given moment in however way they deem appropriate and necessary. Yes, it’s unfortunate to need immigration for your economy, but not at the sake of your values, customs, traditions, and principles.

swat535• 5 months ago

I don't know if you've lived in an Islamic country but I have. In fact I was born there and spent more than half my life under Islamic law. More to it, I am the same brown minority that you seek to defend by posting this.

Westerners are so naive, Islam's objective is to grow and convert as many people as possible. To this end, they have been building mosques all over the world, increasing their population and weaponizing immigration. There is a reason Muslim countries don't allow Christians, Jews and other faiths to flourish in their homes.

Now, is this applicable to all Muslims? Of course not. But don't be naive and think that no one has an agenda. Case in point, my family has Muslims (Shia) and there are some of them I wouldn't want in the West.

No one is advocating for an immigration ban here, or is attempting to bar Muslims. Suggesting caps and enforcing sane limits is a good thing. Nations need to vet their applicants thoroughly before letting them in.

As a final note, I think that immigration is a band-aid for the population collapse in the West. The real issue is the underlying culture change. Perhaps a better avenue is to focus inward and promoting family values instead of outwards to resolve the issue?

_diyar2• 5 months ago

The majority of Swiss immigrants come from Italy, Germany, Portugal, France Kosovo, and Spain.

retired4• 5 months ago

Kosovo

Technically a muslim majority country but likely not what OP ment.

retired4• 5 months ago

migrate to an Islamic country and bring over Christianity there, you would not be welcomed at all

That sounds a lot like what us Europeans did in North Africa not that long ago. We were indeed not welcomed.

happytoexplain8• 5 months ago

Is the purpose of the comparison to show that it can indeed be a bad thing (i.e. you're simply agreeing with the parent), or implying that Europeans should be subject to the same treatment as punishment?

locallost• 5 months ago

This is the trap that the western world has set up for itself. You cannot destroy countries on the grounds that your society is better and that it's worth the destruction to make them be like yourself, and then at the same time say forget about it when it's time to actually be better and more tolerant.

happytoexplain8• 5 months ago

Ignoring the "two wrongs make a right" fallacy (AKA "hypocrisy is the worst sin"), it doesn't even seem to follow. Wouldn't imposing your culture on less developed nations and also rejecting those cultures from your own nation be consistent behavior?

fooker2• 5 months ago

bring over Christianity there

Yes, this covers about a thousand years of European history.

It's funny to see people pretending not to know the history of spreading Christianity and subsequently colonialism.

happytoexplain8• 5 months ago

pretending not to know the history

What are you referring to in the parent comment? It sounds like you're agreeing with them, but this antagonistic part is mysterious.

ignoramous2• 5 months ago

migrate to an Islamic country and bring over Christianity there, you would not be welcomed at all

Well, Europeans ever try their hand with the Jewish one? Seem to have some previous experience there.

rimbo789• 5 months ago

Typical right wing popularism to divide people and ignore the fact they have no actual solutions.

Racism is bad people. This will hurt people living in Switzerland today and those who end up there in the future.

ahtihn2• 5 months ago

Most of the immigration is French, German, Italian.

This isn't about racism. This is about unchecked immigration putting a strain on infrastructure and people feeling like they're losing their identity.

This initiative is stupid but the underlying problem is real: we're letting in too many people too fast.

rdm_blackhole• 5 months ago

Why always bringing back everything to racism? The people of Switzerland want to maintain the look an feel of their country as it is. How is racism the first thing you think of when no one mentionned race?

thrance5• 5 months ago

Because it is motivated by racism, and you can't pretend otherwise. This is pure slopulism.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/1awmq1a/...

derleyici• 5 months ago

This just makes no sense, because before all why 10 million? There is no scientific or proven reason for this number by the proposing party. The SVP position paper is 38 pages of cherry-picked stats but nowhere do they demonstrate why 10 million is the breaking point rather than 9.5 or 11. It is a round number chosen for a slogan.

The Federal Council's official message to Parliament dismantles the whole thing. Real GDP per capita grew 0.82 percent annually between 2002 and 2022, comparable to Norway, Austria, and Denmark. EU and EFTA nationals are net contributors to Swiss social insurance, paying significantly more into AVS, AI, and APG than they receive back.

The SVP frames asylum seekers as the most urgent part of the problem, but recognized refugees make up about 1 percent of total residents. Meanwhile 64 percent of net migration in 2024 came from EU and EFTA countries, overwhelmingly people filling jobs. This is not an asylum crisis, it is labor migration the Swiss economy actively demands.

The initiative would likely require denouncing the ECHR, the Geneva Refugee Convention, and other human rights treaties to hit an arbitrary number. The guillotine clause means killing free movement also kills Schengen and Dublin. And the Federal Council already negotiated a safeguard clause with the EU that allows limiting immigration in justified cases without blowing up the entire bilateral relationship. That is a scalpel.

This initiative is a sledgehammer aimed at a number someone picked because it fits on a poster.

Sorry, not sorry, but facts don't care about feelings.

OGEnthusiast2• 5 months ago

Good for them.

Switzerland to vote on capping population at 10M

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