One in ten Swiss parliamentarians has a second passport

Italian is the most common second nationality among parliamentarians, as it is among the population generally. Illustration: Helen James / SWI swissinfo.ch

Under the dome of the federal parliament building in Bern, about 10% of elected members currently have a second citizenship. The proportion has been increasing over time, but still remains only half of what it is in the general Swiss population.

A high share of the Swiss population has a migration background. That fact is increasingly reflected in its national political institutions. The new parliament elected in Autumn 2023 includes 24 people with a second citizenship besides Swiss, according to a SWI swissinfo.ch tally. Nineteen of them are in the House of Representatives and five in the Senate.

Dual citizens are slightly less numerous than they were in the previous legislature, when as many as 29 parliamentarians had two passports. Some of these did not run again or were not re-elected.

But the long view shows dual citizenship increasing in both houses of parliament. There were only three dual citizens in the early 2000s. Members of the two federal chambers have only been required to declare their second citizenship since summer 2022, which partly explains the increase.

This uptick reflects the trend in the population in general, where dual citizenship is more and more common. Over 19% of Swiss residents had a second passport in 2021, compared to 14% in 2010.

Controversial issue

This state of affairs is a sporadic source of concern for the right-wing Swiss People’s Party. The most recent expression of this came from party representative Mike Egger, who presented in parliament a formal information request on the issue last December.

“It cannot be ruled out that members of the federal assembly who are also foreign nationals may be faced with conflicts of interest to the detriment of Switzerland,” he noted.

To solve this problem, Egger proposed that elected members be obliged to give up their other citizenship once elected, or that they be required to swear an oath of loyalty to Switzerland.

There was a heated debate about dual nationality in 2017 preceding the election of foreign minister Ignazio Cassis to the federal cabinet. Cassis renounced his Italian citizenship to be sure of support on the right.

There are thus no dual citizens in the current government lineup. In order to keep things that way, the People’s Party unsuccessfully tried to get parliament to ban double citizenship for government ministers. The country’s largest party did succeed, however, in bringing in the requirement for parliamentarians to declare their dual citizenship if they have that. This became obligatory in 2022.

The debate on dual citizens exercising political office is, of course, not confined to Switzerland. In Germany, the extreme right-wing party AfD recently demanded that ministers in the state of Baden-Würtemberg should have German citizenship and no other. In France, the issue arose in 2016, when there was a debate about persons guilty of terrorism being stripped of their citizenship.

One country where this is a particular issue is Australia. In 2017, several political figures found themselves mired in scandal when their dual citizenship came to light – in violation of the Australian constitution.

The situation in other countries

Several nations – including the UK, US, Canada, Germany, France and New Zealand – allow dual nationals to hold elected office under various conditions. However, since these countries do not systematically list/identify dual-national parliamentarians, it is impossible to compare numbers.

In the UK, dual nationals can run for parliament if their second nationality is Ireland, a Commonwealth country, or one of certain EU countries having historic links with the UK.

Dual nationals can run for Congress and the Senate but not for president in the US. Texas Senator Ted Cruz was born in Calgary and was a dual US-Canadian citizen until 2016, when he gave up the latter to run for the White House. Film star Arnold Schwarzenegger kept his Austrian passport when he became governor of California.

In Germany, dual citizenship was until recently only possible for citizens of EU countries and Switzerland. However, parliament has since widened this to other nationalities by easing the conditions for obtaining a German passport. Christian Democrat David McAllister, once seen as Angela Merkel’s successor, has British citizenship. McAllister, the son of a Scottish soldier, has represented Germany in the European Parliament and chaired its foreign affairs committee.

Former Canadian prime minister John Turner also held British nationality, while the former head of the country’s liberal party, Stéphane Dion, was French. Around a decade ago, at least 11 parliamentarians in Canada were dual nationals.

Swiss parliamentarians who have a second citizenship belong mostly to the parties of the left: 13 of them are Social Democrats and three are Greens. On the right of the political spectrum, the Radical-Liberal Party has three such members. And, notwithstanding its attacks on dual citizenship, the People’s Party also has three.

One of them is Jean-Luc Addor from Valais. He was convicted of racial discrimination by the Federal Court in 2020, and belongs to the hard right of the People’s Party. He makes no secret, however, of his Swiss-Italian dual nationality, and rejects criticism on this score from his own party ranks.

“No one should be lecturing me about my loyalty to the country of my ancestors,” Addor says. He insists that he is “Swiss by blood”, but acquired Italian citizenship by marriage. “I am attached to my wife’s country of origin, yet if I had to give up my second passport I would not hesitate to do so,” he adds. But he doesn’t find it necessary.

Jean-Luc Addor (People’s Party) got Italian citizenship through marriage. © Keystone / Peter Schneider

Unfounded fears

Basel Social Democrat Sarah Wyss is among the left-wing parliamentarians who have a second passport. “I have French citizenship through my grandmother, who came to live in Switzerland after the War. I got it when I was ten. I have never lived there and have no particular bond [with France],” she explains.

The requirement for parliamentarians to declare second citizenship contributes to transparency, Wyss believes. “That was probably not the goal of the People’s Party who proposed this rule because they were afraid dual citizens might have conflicts of interest,” she notes. Such fears are unfounded, she believes, and only cause unnecessary controversy.

Wyss interprets the increase in the number of plurinationals in parliaments as a good sign for diversity. However, she still sees room for improvement: “not only nationalities, but also genders, sexual orientations, professions or socio-economic categories need to be better represented.”

Social Democrat Sarah Wyss also has a French passport which she inherited from her grandmother. © Keystone / Alessandro Della Valle

Discrimination persists

Political scientist Nenad Stojanovic points out that elected political figures with a second citizenship, like Addor, do not necessarily come from immigrant stock. He also points out that dual nationals are actually still under-represented in parliament, since only 10% of parliamentarians have this status. “If parliament really was a mirror of society,” he says, “the percentage of members of parliament with other nationalities should be double what it is.”

A study by Stojanovic and Lea Portmann showed that political candidates with names of foreign origin are more likely to be crossed out on electoral lists and less likely to be cumulated (that is, given more than one vote by a voter using the list). “What with these two mechanisms, people from an immigrant background tend to find it harder to get into parliament,” Stojanovic explains. As it is, most dual citizens in the federal parliament have family names that do not reveal their second nationality.

Before getting crossed out or cumulated on a party list, of course, a person has to be on the list. There has been less progress here than there might be. Noemi Carrel, who has written her doctoral thesis on accessibility of political office at local level in Switzerland, believes it is crucial to focus on that local level. “That’s where the parties need to recruit new members and put forward people from an immigrant background,” she points out. At the same time, she admits that the process is a long-term one.

Italy at the top of the list

Some nationalities are better represented than others in federal politics. The most common second passport is Italian; 13 Swiss parliamentarians are citizens of Italy. Germany, France and Turkey have three dual citizens each as parliamentarians. The two other cases are Jacqueline Badran, who is an Australian citizen, and Daniel Jositsch, who is also Colombian.

The main second citizenships found in parliament (Italian, French, German and Turkish) are pretty much the same as in the population at large. On the other hand, Portuguese and Spanish dual citizens are not yet represented in parliament. In the country as a whole, those are the third and fourth ethnic groups respectively with the most dual citizens.

These proportions, which are much the same at local government level, are no surprise to Carrel. “Immigrants from the neighbouring countries already know one of our national languages. That facilitates political participation even by first-generation immigrants. What is more, their names are no obstacle to a political career,” she points out.

The strong presence of the Italo-Swiss in this country’s political life is not surprising either, because Italians are the biggest immigrant ethnic group here. These are often second-, third- or even fourth-generation immigrants, whose family history can be traced to the wave of immigration of Italian workers in the second half of the twentieth century.

“That is now shown by their achieving political office, and it indicates their acceptance as citizens within Swiss society. It’s certainly a long-term process, but it means we can expect political participation by other immigrant communities in the future,” she concludes.

Reviewed and checked by Samuel Jaberg

Adapted from French by Terence MacNamee/ds