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This is such a fascinating referendum. The population is at 9.1m, and at 9.5m it appears they'll stall asylum and family reunification, and at 10m they'll execu
by arjie 5mo ago
This is such a fascinating referendum. The population is at 9.1m, and at 9.5m it appears they'll stall asylum and family reunification, and at 10m they'll execute a Swexit - Switzerland isn't in the EU but it allows freedom of movement to EU nationals. Boy it is interesting to see what's going on in the world right now. There were so many things that I saw growing up as relatively solid but I just happened to grow up in an era of European unity and American primacy. I thought that even Brexit was a one-off event, but perhaps it is the other way around and European unity is a temporary thing that fragments easily. An interesting age, in the Austen Chamberlain sense.
- teiferer 5mo ago> interesting The word I'd choose instead is "concerning" if not "scary".
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- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> execute a Swexit It wouldn’t be full Chexit. Just renegotiating and then rejecting the Schengen chapter. It would then be up to the EU to execute its Guillotine clause.
- ceejayoz 5mo agoSure, and I didn't shoot you, I just sent a bullet in your direction.
- tonfa 5mo agoEspecially after we saw how happy the EU was to negotiate (they didn't budge) when https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Swiss_immigration_initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Swiss_immigration_initiat... passed. The new initiative is basically the same, but with no leeway to ignore it. (that said I suspect if it passes, there will be something tied to the bilateral referendum in 2027/28 to try to supersede it)
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> if it passes, there will be something tied to the bilateral referendum in 2027/28 to try to supersede it This is my thinking, too. If it really comes down to Chexit-or-nothing, we’ll have another referendum.
- ceejayoz 5mo agoThat was the UK's thinking, too. "We won't have a hard Brexit! Of course they'll negotiate a plan!"
- JumpCrisscross 5mo agoAnd then the UK delivered an Article 50 notice. That isn’t something this referendum would force.
- ceejayoz 5mo agoThe UK's referendum was also non-binding, in theory.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> UK's referendum was also non-binding, in theory If SVP gets control of government they’ll probably try to Chexit irrespective of any referendum power. That’s orthogonal to this question.
- tonfa 5mo agoWell there's anyway going to be a referendum about the bilateral. (which is why I find the initiative somewhat stupid, you can vote on the real deal in a few years, about whether people want or do not want to have agreements with the EU, instead of hiding it behind a fake/emotional reason)
- ericmay 5mo ago> It would then be up to the EU to execute its Guillotine clause. These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of attitudes and suggestions are precisely why so many folks have come to be anti-EU. Nevermind the actual other real day-to-day issues with the organization. I'm sure you're also staunchly against Scotland and any referendum to join the EU, and against Catalonia becoming independent as well? Why should Taiwan be an exception and not part of China? Seems many of the EU are of the opinion that "We support sovereignty when it conveniently aligns with my chosen organization". The default and perhaps what is best for democracy is to have many smaller nation states, city states, and the other various confederations and the like. The super-organization of nations into these unwieldy states is in many respects anti-democratic and perhaps only temporary as these large nations and alliances were built precisely to fight other, large nation states.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> sure you're also staunchly against Scotland and any referendum to join the EU, and against Catalonia becoming independent as well? Why? I think the first is a good idea and the second fine if that’s what they want.
- ericmay 5mo agoBecause those would be breaking up the unions of those countries. It's no different morally or philosophically from Switzerland leaving the EU.
- AnimalMuppet 5mo agoSay what? Switzerland isn't in the EU, how can it leave? It has treaties, but not membership. That doesn't make it "leaving" if they annul the treaties.
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- mahkeiro 5mo agoSchengen is not the free movement clause… sad to see people that don’t even know the difference (free movement existed before Schengen).
- cromka 5mo agoIt's crazy how people really don't get the difference between free movement and Schengen.
- cromka 5mo agoIt's not Schengen. It's Free Movement, the core principle of EEA. You're not in EEA, you don't get free access to EU market. This would be catastrophic to Swiss economy.
- mike_hearn 5mo agoIt wasn't catastrophic to the British economy. Why would Switzerland be so different?
- whazor 5mo agoMost British people think Brexit is a failure. For Switzerland it would be significantly worse since they are surrounded by Germany, France, Italy, and Austria. So all trucks would be stopped at border. Food prices are already super expensive and this would make it worse.
- elch 5mo agoPrices are not an issue for Switzerland, given that the tariff on pork from Germany, for example, is 347 CHF per 100 kg.
- mike_hearn 5mo agoThey think it's a failure because their political class refused to use the new powers to implement the will of the people on immigration, not due to economics (which, again, were not affected).
- 0xy 5mo agoBrexit was a referendum on immigration. It was the number one issue. Yet, successive governments since Brexit have turned immigration up to 11. No wonder they think it's a failure, the will of the people was ignored (and it's having real political blowback, with both major parties about to get reduced to dust according to polling).
- ayylemao 5mo agoits called Switzerleave
- seydor 5mo agodamn, the word 'execute' reverberated interestingly
- mc32 5mo agoIt veers too close to Logan’s Run when they cap things like that. I’m sure it’s just policy action at the various thresholds but it sure sounds odd.
- foobarian 5mo agoElderly people in our village in east Europe used to be super suspicious of the EU project and would say that European countries get along like "a sack of horns." Hopefully they were wrong :-)
- joe_mamba 5mo ago>would say that European countries get along like "a sack of horns." True words of wisdom. > Hopefully they were wrong :-) They weren't. EU membership and cooperation is built on favoritism and necessity. You get into the EU if you have something of value the other members need from you (capital, geopolitical, industrial, human or natural resources) done via treaties instead of via war and conquest. So it ended up as a toxic relationship where members exploit each other to get as much as they can while contributing as little as they can. @Ukraine, you'll experience this when you get your turn, just ask Romania.
- throw-the-towel 5mo agoBut what did Romania experience?
- joe_mamba 5mo agoBanks, energy, telecom, defence, oil & gas companies had to be sold to French, German and Austrian companies for below market value, so those countries would lift their veto. Same with joining NATO TBF. We had to buy some overpriced shoddy used F-16 from the US with a lot of miles on the clock, for the same price of brand new Swedish Gripens just so the US would accepts us in NATO. So if history does indeed repeat itself, Ukraine will also have to sell off vital industry and resources to major EU corporations to get in. Like all those new shiny drone startups they have. Safe to assume Rheinmetall or Dassault will want those under German/French flag before Ukraine is allowed in the EU. Same with oil, gas and rare earths. Basically EU and NATO are two tier institutions. First there's the whales, the big players who are founders and make the rules, or get invited to join, and then there's the scrappy low level players, who need to beg and offer monetary dowry to be allowed to join. In theory everyone is equal, except some dogs are more equal than others. Because everything in the world is transactional pay-to-win. There's no charity and no handouts. If you're being invited somewhere or given something, it's because something from you is expected in exchange. @throwaway85825 Yes, except that was non negotiable form the US side. "You buy our overpriced junk or take a hike, I don't care if your poor country can't afford it." Leaked cables between our leaders at the time. Also food for thought to MAGA who keeps thinking that US acted like a charity for NATO.
- rayiner 5mo agoCalling it a population cap for something that seems to be about stricter border controls is a wild marketing choice.
- bootsmann 5mo agoIt is a population cap, you can read this proposal its like 5 lines of text.
- gmac 5mo agoNo, it's an immigration restriction. There's no way it applies if the Swiss start having 5 kids each.
- stymaar 5mo agoIt's a migration cap. There's no provision on sterilizing Swiss women should the threshold be reached through birthrate…
- l23k4 5mo agoThey're economically sterilizing themselves by starting a conflict with the EU at that point.
- usefulcat 5mo agoIf Swiss population growth were entirely attributable to the children of existing Swiss residents, then this initiative would be pointless because it wouldn't change anything, and we would not be having this conversation. So yes, it absolutely is about immigration, regardless of the wording.
- panick21_ 5mo agoApparently you are unable to understand that if people who have been crying about immigration for 20 years that now push this things does not mean they have changed their mind. They just try to hide what's obvious to confuse uniformed voters (like old people who just see big number and remember the 1970s).
- philipallstar 5mo ago> There were so many things that I saw growing up as relatively solid but I just happened to grow up in an era of European unity and American primacy European unity works well in a world of mostly-stable populations. Having mass migrations from large, relatively empty countries, to pretty full ones, is going to make the full ones increasingly expensive to make housing for, to power, and to water.
- kaufmae 5mo agomost of the immigrants are highly educated professionals, big tech, pharma and meds. it‘s not the „empty“.
- throw-the-towel 5mo agoCan you back up your claims? I don't have a dog in this fight, but do notice people ridiculing migrants as "doctors and engineers".
- tempay 5mo agoAs with everything it's complicated but it's more true than not: https://nccr-onthemove.ch/indicators/how-qualified-are-migrants-in-switzerland/ https://nccr-onthemove.ch/indicators/how-qualified-are-migra... More importantly, education isn't everything. Half the economy runs on work that doesn't need higher education and that locals largely won't do: cleaning, care, hospitality, construction. The Spanish and Portuguese speaking workers doing those jobs are propping up a standard of living for everyone.
- throwaway85825 5mo agoWon't do or won't do for slave wages?
- tempay 5mo agoI can't comment outside of Geneva but it's hardly "slave wages": * https://www.mission-geneve.dfae.admin.ch/en/manual-labour-minimum-wage-in-the-canton-of-geneva https://www.mission-geneve.dfae.admin.ch/en/manual-labour-mi... * (scroll to the cost breakdown) https://batmaid.ch/en/about-us https://batmaid.ch/en/about-us
- whycome 5mo agoJust wait til Canada joins the EU and we will have a rethinking of any such unions as not necessarily being related to geographic location.
- bsimpson 5mo agoI was a teenager when 9/11 happened. Until that point, I thought wars were a stupid thing that humanity realized were stupid and stopped doing.
- prmoustache 5mo agoThere hasn't been a year, or even week without a war. How could you have thought that wars didn't exist?
- ksd482 5mo agoChange is the only constant. Nothing lasts forever. Good times will come and go and so would bad times. I think as humans we are used to small time frames which are proportional to our own lifetime. But the world: say climate, population, geology etc. moves at a much different cycle, if at all you can call it a cycle since none of the iterations are exactly the same. So the lesson is this: change is coming. Change will always be coming. Embrace it. If you like something, you have to struggle to preserve it as much as you can, for as long as you can, but you can never make it permanent.
- throwaway85825 5mo agoEmbrace negative change?
- ksd482 5mo agoOf course not. But expect it and prepare for it.
- account42 5mo agoChange may be inevitable but not every change is and we shouldn't stop insisting that things change for the better.
- ksd482 5mo ago> we shouldn't stop insisting that things change for the better I never said we shouldn't. What I meant by "Change will always be coming. Embrace it.", is to accept it as a reality, be ready for it and prepare for it. That means, be ready to resist negative change and accept positive change. Even after successfully resisting negative change, the end state may still be different than before. This is what we have to accept and be ready for, mentally.
- l23k4 5mo agoThe EU will retaliate this time around and impose ruinous costs on Switzerland if it chooses to go through with this. Unlike the Brits, the Swiss have absolutely no leg to stand on here. If EU closes the borders, the Swiss will literally die of hunger.
- marcusverus 5mo ago"Don't leave us or we'll kill you" isn't the pro-EU argument you seem to think it is.
- l23k4 5mo agoThat seems like an unreasonable interpretation of what I said, which was just pointing out the futility of the Swiss position. EU can impose its will at essentially zero cost no matter what the Swiss do.