Referendum on immigration limit could threaten EU agreements and cripple economy, say Swiss businesses
Switzerland will vote this summer on a proposal from the far-right Swiss People’s party (SVP) to limit the country’s population to 10 million, a move that would threaten key agreements with the EU and, opponents say, cripple the economy.
The government said on Wednesday the referendum on the SVP’s “No to a 10 million Switzerland” initiative, which is strongly opposed by both chambers of parliament and the business and financial services community, would be held on 10 June.
The initiative would oblige the Swiss government and parliament to act if the country’s permanent population, currently 9.1 million, exceeds 9.5 million by denying entrance to newcomers, including asylum seekers and the families of foreign residents.
That’s kind of a separate issue. You can have overpopulation of a given physical area with or without wealth inequality.
There only is overpopulation when there aren’t enough resources (read food, jobs, facilities, land to live in, etc) for everybody. The smaller the piece of the 99% the more they’ll feel like there is too much population.
Land to live in is the key one here. Remember, we’re talking about Switzerland, not North America.
So imagine 10 people have 100sq units, the billionaire lives on 91 and the other live on 9, it starts to feel really crowded when another person comes in. Best case he is poor and they have to spread the 9sq units among the ten of them. Worst case is this new guy is even richer as the other billionaire. He buys half the billionaires land and half the poor people land. Now the new guy has 51sq units, the other billionaire 45.5sq unit, and only 4.5sq meters for the poor people. Obviously everytime a new guy moves in everybody will scream overpopulation, but is this really because the new guy takes up too much space or because the space was badly divided?
You are clearly missing my point, or you have no concept of how small Switzerland is and how little of it’s land is suitable for habitation. You could take the richest 1% of people on the planet, stick them all in Switzerland with equal land to live in, and it would be overcrowded. It’s a problem of physical space in that particular country, not wealth distribution.
Geneva is the densest city in Switzerland, and not even in the top 10 in Europe, or top 100 in the world. They’ve got room.
I’ve spent some time in Switzerland. There is a TON of space that is suitable for habitation that either isn’t used or is used for farming (necessarily). I remember traveling around thinking how empty it felt outside of cities. Even the cities didn’t feel crowded compared to other cities I’ve been to.
A) Your 1% hypothetical would be making the population 10x higher than now, so obviously they could not handle having the 1%. It’s a dumb hypothetical.
B) Assuming we go with your hypothetical, each person of that 80 million people in 16,000 sqmi would get 5600 sqft. My entire property, regardless of my house size, is not 5600 sqft. So I wouldn’t feel bad about that much space. Yeah, much of the mountainous areas are not habitable, but that’s why multilevel housing was developed. If we assume only 25% of their country is habitable, then that still gives each person of that 80 million person around 1400 sqft. That’s bigger than my 3br house! If we go multilevel housing, then you can still have a ton of space for people.
Thanks for calculating that, land to live on is definitely not a defining factor in deciding whether Switzerland is overpopulated or not. Maybe back in a time where everybody had to feed themselves from working the land, but in 2026 you could easily fill Switzerland 10 times over and it still wouldn’t be a densely populated country. Plenty of cities that are much smaller in size while having over 10 mio inhabitants.
1% of the world population is more than 80 million. Them being rich or not isn’t what matters, how the resources are divided is the problem. There is enough space also in Switzerland for many more people but not if all of them are poor and uneducated, nor if all of them are surgeons and lawyers, nor if they all want to start a free roam chicken farm. More equality leads to more perceived space, because low equality leads to people living in small houses in dense cities. But if you’re not from Switzerland it might not really matter what argument i bring up.
Just looked it up Switzerland is smaller than I thought it was. For other Americans, it’s roughly the size of Maryland or West Virginia.
And a lot of that is mountains.
The hypothetical still allows 1400 sqft per person of that 1% of the world, neglecting any multilevel housing.