‘Dialogue’: should the 2022 vote on the Swiss pension system be re-run?

After the miscalculation come the hard questions: should the 2022 vote to raise the retirement age for women be repeated? Keystone/Gaetan Bally

After news that official financial forecasts for the pension system had been miscalculated, left-wing groups have appealed the result of the 2022 vote to raise the retirement age for women. What’s your opinion – should voters have their say on the issue again? Join the discussion on “dialogue”!

Last week, the Federal Social Insurance Office admitted it had got its sums seriously wrong for projected expenditure by the old-age and survivor insurance (OASI) system. In 2033, the annual payouts are likely to be around CHF4 billion ($4.7 billion) less than had been previously forecast – or around 6% lower than estimated.

A few days later, at the end of an official appeal period, five complaints about the 2022 vote to raise the retirement age for women had been submitted. At the time, the proposal to raise the age from 64 to 65 was accepted by a wafer-thin majority (50.5%). Trade unions and left-wing parties are now arguing that the incorrect financial forecasts were the main reason why the population voted as it did.

Courts will now examine the question of whether the outcome of the 2022 vote should be declared invalid or not.

What’s your opinion? Should the vote be re-held? Join the discussion on our debate platform “dialogue”.

Voting again…

For parliamentarian Céline Amaudruz, who is also vice-president of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, the situation raises questions which go beyond political party lines. While she herself was in favour of raising the retirement age, she emphasises the importance of accurate information for direct democracy in an interview with French-speaking Swiss public Radio, RTS (see below).

“Given that the majority was 50.5%, and if the public believes that it was not able to vote properly, then yes, we must vote again, if there are obvious errors. But that’s for the legal system to decide,” she said.

For Amaudruz, what is at stake is not who won or lost, but whether direct democracy as such functioned properly or not.

… is not that simple

But according to Vincent Martenet, a law professor at the University of Lausanne, cancelling a vote is not that simple: the basic error must be judged to be severe enough, the result of the ballot in question must have been close, and the vote must not have taken place too far in the past.

In the case of the miscalculations and the 2022 vote, he told RTS that “we must bear in mind that [the figures] were about a long-term prediction, and that the general trend [of the pension system’s worsening finances] is not called into question by this correction.” Also, the reform as such has already been implemented.

Personnel consequences?

Following the public announcement of the miscalculations, Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider has ordered an administrative enquiry to clarify how the error could have occurred.

Asked whether this mistake requires consequences in terms of personnel, Baume-Schneider told German-speaking Swiss public radio, SRF: “We now have this administrative investigation which is the first step to show us what happened. And then, I will do everything I can to clarify whether or not a disciplinary investigation is necessary.”

Not the first mistake

In the past ten years, the government has admitted at least three miscalculations on major political issues, as SWI swissinfo.ch writes.

Just last year, the Federal Statistical Office made a programming error which led to the strengths of political parties being – initially – incorrectly reported on election Sunday. And in 2019, the government said its estimate that 80,000 couples would be affected by a “marriage tax penalty” – which citizens voted on in 2016 – was way off the mark. Actually, it was 454,000 couples, the government revealed. As a result, Switzerland’s highest court annulled the outcome of the 2016 vote.

But projections are notoriously problematic, not to mention increasingly complex. And calculating them correctly has become even more complicated as Switzerland has become more integrated in the global economy, making the country more susceptible to crises, says Sean Müller, a political scientist specialising in direct democracy at the University of Lausanne.

Federalism also complicates things. Each canton has a different corporate tax rate, education system and budget for infrastructure.

“Mistakes happen to everyone. What is disturbing is the absolute conviction with which supposedly rock-solid figures are forecast, even though they are often based on many assumptions, formulas and insufficient data,” Müller said. He suggests that forecasts be more clearly identified as such and the data and calculations should always be provided so that a critical discussion can take place.

Restoring trust

Giuliano Bonoli, professor of social policy at the University of Lausanne, shares this opinion. “Predictions should always be taken with a certain amount of caution”, he told Italian-speaking Swiss public radio, RSI.

In his opinion, the fact that mistakes have not been discovered for so long does not encourage trust. “It is important that everything has been done to re-establish a viable model.”

What do you think? Answer the following questions and compare your views with people living in Switzerland and the Swiss Abroad:

What is ‘dialogue’?

“dialogue” aims to bridge language divides and foster closer connections between people living in Switzerland and the Swiss Abroad. It offers content from all five units of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), translated into all national languages ​​and English, and a debate platformExternal link, where people in Switzerland and the Swiss Abroad can discuss current issues.