In a move intended to restrict mass migration, Switzerland will hold a referendum to restrict their population to 10 million until 2050.
The vote will take place after the populist Swiss People’s Party (UDC) harvested 114,600 signatures in just nine months, meeting a government requirement for 100,000 signatures within 18 months for the referendum to go ahead.
If approved, the referendum will ensure Switzerland maintains “sustainable demographic development” by restricting the permanent resident population of the wealthy European country to 10 million for the next 25 years.
“Under the proposal, the Swiss government would have to take urgent measures as soon as the permanent resident population exceeds 9.5 million by, for example, suspending the ability for migrants to obtain residence permits, Swiss citizenship, or any other right to stay in the country,” reports Remix News.
The vote would also likely mean Switzerland would be forced to end its bilateral agreement with the European Union on free movement and pull out of the U.N. Global Compact for Migration.
UDC leader Marco Chiesa said the referendum would guarantee “the safety, services, and well-being of all of us” while serving “to preserve our values: independence, direct democracy, sovereignty, and freedom.”
“Since 2023, for the first time, more than 9 million people have been living in our country,” said UDC National Councilor and Group Chairman Thomas Aeschi.
“Last year, an additional 98,851 people immigrated to our country. Added to this are more than 30,000 asylum seekers.”
As in other European countries, mass migration to Switzerland has resulted in “housing shortages and rising rents, traffic jams on the roads, crowded trains and buses, falling standards of schools, increasing violence and crime, electricity shortages, income stagnating per capita, ever-higher health insurance premiums, indebted social services, and increased pressure on the beauty of the landscape and the preservation of nature,” according to the party.
The UDC previously warned that the country was being subsumed by mass migration, with new arrivals from Africa having welfare rates of 34 per cent.
Around two-thirds of prison inmates in Switzerland are foreign nationals, with Algerians representing the highest proportion.
