Brussels, 01/12/2014 (Agence Europe) - The Swiss have voted against further restrictions on immigration. On Sunday 30 November, 74.1% of those who voted rejected the Ecopop proposition brought forward on environmental grounds.
For the second time in a year, the Swiss were called on to express their view on immigration, after the referendum of 9 February which required the Bern government to prepare quotas for foreign workers within three years.
This time, electors were asked to put a “stop to overpopulation” by the Ecology and Population organisation (Ecopop), which wants to limit the country's net immigration to 0.2% of the population (around 16,000 people). It also called for Switzerland to devote 10% of its development aid to birth control measures in the countries of the South.
“At the rate at which we are currently covering the countryside in concrete, 1.1 square metres per second, by 2050, if nothing is done, we will have completely concreted” all the non-mountainous regions of Switzerland, argue Ecopop members, quoted by AFP. The initiative was not supported by the political parties, however, not even the populist UDC, which was behind the February referendum. All parties argued that the economy, some sectors of which, such as health, have up to one third foreign workers, would have been adversely affected.
In a separate referendum also on Sunday 30 November, the Swiss voted not to abolish lump-sum taxation (see separate article). (SP)