Swiss Campaign to Cap Population Is ‘Dangerous,’ Minister Says

(Bloomberg) — A right-wing campaign to cap Switzerland’s population is “dangerous” and threatens businesses’ ability to attract top talent, the country’s finance chief said.

Immigration has long been a hot button issue in Switzerland. The far right Swiss People’s Party, the country’s largest, is behind a push to limit the number of inhabitants to 10 million that will probably be on the ballot from 2026. 

But the propaganda behind the initiative rests on a misconception, Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter said at a Bloomberg event on Thursday.

“When people talk about immigration or migration, what they mean is asylum seekers,” she said. “They don’t really mean the qualified staff in hospitals, the doctors we need. We couldn’t work without them.”

More than one out of every four Swiss residents is a foreigner, one of the highest rates in Europe. Last year, some 180,000 people immigrated into Switzerland, most of them coming for work.  Switzerland’s population recently reached 9 million.

“Foreigners have contributed significantly to offsetting the shortage of skilled and unskilled labor,” the Federal Office for Migration said.

The population cap proposal doesn’t distinguish between newcomers arriving for work and those who seek to flee war or poverty. This clashes with the needs of Swiss businesses, which rely on talent from abroad. Executives have warned that a population cap would force firms to expand elsewhere rather than in Switzerland.

“We have to hire people. And if we can’t get them in Switzerland, we have to hire them somewhere else,” Roche Holding AG’s Chief Executive Officer Thomas Schinecker has said last month. “I don’t mean that as a threat, by the way. It’s simply a reality.”

At Thursday’s event in Zurich, Keller-Sutter said that there’s also a “responsibility of Swiss businesses to try to recruit Swiss people whenever possible.” But she acknowledged that the country’s aging population poses a challenge.

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