The results of today’s votes are in and the ultra conservative are celebrating a victory by a very slim margin (50.3%) in favour of reintroducing quotas for foreigners who wish to come and work/live/study in Switzerland. Playing on people’s fear of losing their jobs and being outnumbered by foreigners they managed to convince just enough people to sway the vote. Interestingly the cantons who said yes were pretty much all of the Swiss German cantons (with the exception of Zürich and Zug) and the Tessin ones. The town of Luzern voted no by over 60% (unfortunately the canton felt otherwise).
What does this mean? Right now, the government is going to have to work out what this means in concrete terms; even within the SVP faction it is thought that this should not affect foreign workers but rather students… which makes little sense… This will put into question the bilateral agreement between Switzerland and the EU and will seriously damage Switzerland’s image abroad. But basically if you come from outside the EU little will change as quotas are already in place, any change would concern EU citizens..
Time will tell where this is going to go and whether the government will have some leg room to not make this the disaster several economists and politicians are forecasting this to be.
In a sweet irony, foreigners now have a democratic voice on a local level (that was one of the local decisions to be made), so if someone wants to put together a petition reversing this decision then you are legally allowed to sign in favour of it, as long as you have a C Permit!
The vote for the cancellation of the property tax was accepted as was the proposition to allow the town to spend money even when their budget is questioned by a third party, and the town’s counter-offer for a communal living and working space in the town was also accepted.
On a national level, abortions will continue to be paid for by the insurances and the budget for improving the public transport was also improved.
All in all a mixed bag, but the vote with the greatest long term repercussion will be the one on foreigners right to residency… We’ll keep you posted on developments.
