An unusual proposal to limit Switzerland’s population to 10 million appears to be gaining ground, despite concerns that it could endanger the country’s economy and relationship with the European Union.
The initiative, backed by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), was rejected by the government last March. But it is gaining popularity among the public, who will vote on the proposal in a June 14 referendum: over half of Swiss respondents said they’re in favor of the proposal, according to a new opinion poll.
The survey of 16,176 respondents on April 22 and 23 showed that 52% were in favor of the proposal while 46% were against it. The remaining 2% of respondents were undecided. The poll, conducted by media group Tamedia, newspaper 20 Minuten and polling institute Leewas, was published in Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger.
The results suggest that support for the initiative has grown since early March, when an earlier poll showed 45% of respondents in favor of the proposal and 47% against. Tages-Anzeiger noted that Swiss referendum proposals typically lose support closer to the voting day.
Switzerland has experienced rapid population growth, largely driven by immigration, with the population increasing by 1.9 million people since 2000, according to think tank Avenir Suisse. The country’s population exceeded 9 million last year, with foreign nationals accounting for around 27%, according to government data.
How does the proposal work?
The proposal would cap the permanent resident population at 10 million before 2050. If the population exceeds 9.5 million before then, the government would have to take measures to curb immigration, including tightening rules for asylum and permanent residence. Crossing that threshold would also force the government to “renegotiate international agreements that drive population growth,” according to the proposal.
And if the population hits 10 million, Switzerland would likely have to abandon a free-movement agreement with the E.U. that has been in place for more than two decades. The agreement allows citizens of E.U. member states and Switzerland to live, work, and purchase property in each other’s countries.
Have other countries had population caps?
If enacted, Switzerland’s fixed population ceiling may be the first of its kind to be enshrined in law, although in practice other countries have implemented policies aimed at limiting population growth either through restricting immigration or controlling birth rates.
China’s one-child policy, which was in place from 1979 to 2015, restricted families to one child; additional children would often lead to fines, loss of benefits, or other penalties. In the 1970s, Singapore also had a “Stop at Two” campaign to curb population growth, which disincentivized people from having more than two children. Now these countries, like much of the world, are facing declining birth rates that threaten to upend their economies.
Switzerland’s proposal is functionally more akin to an immigration quota. Many countries, including the U.S., Canada, Japan, and several in Europe, regulate immigration through quotas for certain visa categories, sectors, and at times country of origin. Unlike the Swiss proposal, which would set a long-term population cap till 2050, these quotas are often regularly reviewed. Between 1920 and 1965, the U.S. also strictly limited immigrants by nationality through a quota system and prohibited a large number of Asians from entering the U.S. through the Immigration Act of 1924. Those policies are widely seen today as racist and exclusionary.
Switzerland also already has quotas for immigration of nationals from countries outside the E.U. The quotas are set each year by the Swiss government. In 2024, the quota was 8,500 for non-E.U. citizens and 3,500 for U.K. citizens. Those quotas are consistently underfilled, with around two-thirds of the quota for non-E.U. workers and a fifth of the quota for U.K. nationals met in recent years.
What are arguments for the proposal?
SVP’s initiative argues that “uncontrolled immigration” is placing overwhelming pressure on Switzerland’s public infrastructure and increasing housing costs. More than 114,000 people signed onto the initiative, reaching the threshold for a plebiscite that will be voted on this summer. SVP is the largest party in Switzerland’s government.
Immigration is the biggest driver of Switzerland’s population growth. Switzerland’s net migration is around 80,000 people per year, according to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office. Meanwhile, Switzerland has a relatively weak fertility rate, with natural growth (births minus deaths) at around 6,000 in 2024. The fertility rate is around 1.3 children per woman, below the replacement rate—the average number of children that must be born to keep a population size constant without migration—of 2.1 per woman.
What are arguments against the proposal?
Many Swiss lawmakers have pushed back against the initiative over concerns that it could hurt the Swiss economy, especially after U.S. tariffs last year impacted several Swiss industries like luxury goods, watches, machinery, and pharmaceuticals. Potentially terminating the free movement agreement with the E.U. could also impact Switzerland’s security and cooperation with the E.U.
“To permanently restrict immigration,” the country’s governing Federal Council said last March, “Switzerland would have to take measures that would be detrimental to its prosperity and incompatible with Switzerland’s international obligations.”
In December, both chambers of the Swiss Parliament formally recommended a “no” vote to the initiative.
Some have argued that the initiative may be limited in how it can meaningfully reduce immigration by restricting asylum, given that it would still be constrained by international human rights legal protections. Last year, just 7,300 of some 30,000 asylum applications were granted a refugee permit, and another 5,000 were provisionally granted a temporary permit to stay and work because returning them to their home countries would violate the principle of non-refoulement that is protected by international law.
Economiesuisse, Switzerland’s largest business federation, has also objected to the proposal, warning that limiting immigration could lead to labor shortages especially for healthcare, research and service industries that depend on foreign labor. Switzerland’s aging population and falling birth rate will only exacerbate those shortages, the Swiss business lobby said.
“A policy that exacerbates the labor shortage and at the same time jeopardizes relations with the E.U. endangers the quality of life and prosperity of all people living in Switzerland,” Rudolf Minsch, chief economist and executive board member of Economiesuisse, said in a statement.
The free movement of labor between European countries also allows for companies to establish multiple international branches and standardize licensing requirements, Mindy Marks, an economist at Northeastern University, told the university’s Northeastern Global News in March.
“There’s this belief that there’s a fixed number of things—a fixed number of resources, a fixed amount of infrastructure—and if we just plop in more people, we’re going to ruin it all,” Marks said.
“But the wrongness of that belief is that the pie isn’t fixed,” she added. “People are an asset. People innovate. We figure stuff out, we produce new things. We make the pie bigger.”
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