SWITZERLAND
No Wall, Please
Swiss voters soundly rejected a referendum that would have terminated an accord with the European Union on the free movement of people in a vote that resembled the Brexit referendum in 2016, the Guardian reported.
Near-final results on Sunday showed that nearly 62 percent of the voters rejected the proposal pushed by the anti-immigration Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which is also the largest party in parliament.
Non-nationals comprise roughly a quarter of Switzerland’s 8.6 million inhabitants and the SVP believes the country should control the number of foreigners allowed to settle in Switzerland. The proposal was opposed by the government, business leaders and parliamentarians, who argued that ending the free movement agreement could severely impact Switzerland’s economy.
Switzerland – a non-EU member – has signed more than 120 bilateral treaties with the bloc since 2002: These regulate trade, transport and research among other issues. If the free movement principle would have been terminated, it would have automatically canceled all bilateral agreements under a so-called “guillotine clause.”
The SVP has tried before to limit free movement between Switzerland and the bloc: In 2014, it narrowly won a referendum to implement immigration quotas. However, the initiative was watered down, allowing a degree of flexibility for cantons in some sectors but also crucially imposing no fixed limits on EU immigration.
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