Is a Swiss population cap to reduce immigration an unprecedented idea?

With its initiative, the right-wing Swiss People's Party is calling on the authorities to prevent the country’s permanent resident population from reaching ten million by 2050. Keystone / Peter Schneider

A popular initiative aims to force the Swiss government to limit the country’s population to ten million until 2050 – by restricting immigration. Have similar policies been implemented elsewhere in the world?

On June 14, the Swiss will vote on an immigration initiative that is generating considerable debate, even beyond the country’s borders. It frames migration issues in an unusual way by linking immigrants to a risk of overpopulation.

The “No to ten million!External link” initiative, submitted by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, would compel the Swiss government and parliament to limit the number of permanent residents to ten million until 2050 and to stabilise the population at roughly that level in the future.

The initiative proposes that as of 2050, the government would be able to “adjust the limit each year based on the natural population growth”. In other words, the cap would not apply to births within Switzerland.

To maintain the ten-million limit, the government would have to adjust the number of immigrants allowed entry. Restrictions would first be placed on the number of asylum seekers permitted to remain in Switzerland. As a last resort, the agreement with the European Union on the free movement of persons might need to be terminated.

The first steps would be taken as soon as the population reaches 9.5 million.

>> Read about the details of the initiative and the arguments of its supporters and opponents:

An unprecedented experiment?

The government is among the numerous opponents of the initiative. Justice Minister Beat Jans, a left-wing Social Democrat, calls the initiative “radical”. In a recent interviewExternal link with the Le Temps newspaper, he says that it “proposes a population ceiling, an experiment that no other country in the world has yet attempted”.

Swissinfo interviewed three demographers, in Switzerland and abroad, to verify this claim.

Population growth and immigration

The People’s Party correctly describes Switzerland’s current demographic reality. One of the smallest countries in Europe, it has one of the highest population growth rates on the continent: about 1% per year. Immigration is the principal engine of this increase as the birth rate is at a historic low (1.29 children per woman in 2024). The initiative’s target numbers might even be exceeded before they enter into force through legislation. The Federal Statistical Office estimatesExternal link that the Swiss population will reach 9.5 million by the early 2030s and ten million at the start of the 2040s.

In many developed countries, immigration only just stabilises population numbers – a situation very different from Switzerland’s. Some are even experiencing population decline.

>> The following article explores divisions over immigration, especially in countries where rapid population growth is driven by immigrants:

In other words, few other developed countries are demographically similar to Switzerland. As a result, says Tomas SobotkaExternal link, deputy director of the Vienna Institute of Demography, “the fact that the [immigration] discussion focuses on the size of the population [and] the risk of ‘overpopulation’ is very unusual”.

Immigration is a political issue almost everywhere, but debate generally centres on social cohesion and the number and profile of immigrants.

Dutch right wing seized on immigration – and lost power

According to Sobotka, only the Netherlands has recently entered a debate similar to Switzerland’s. It too is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, and its population growth is likewise fuelled by immigration. Its population currently stands at 18 million.

In the 1990s, a Dutch organisation called the Ten Million Club proposed a population limit of ten million, but its recommendations were never implemented.

In 2024, a state demographic commission published a reportExternal link advocating “moderate growth”. Although it does not propose a population cap, it recommends a 2050 goal in the range of 19 to 20 million residents.

The far-right government of Geert Wilders envisionedExternal link strict immigration controls to meet this objective, but it lost its bid for re-election in November 2025. Wilders’s centrist successor, Rob Jetten, has so far been more moderate on immigration issues.

Luxembourg considers population cap dystopian

Luxembourg, another small country that attracts a large number of foreign workers, does not appear to share a concern about immigration. According to a March articleExternal link in the Luxembourg Times, most of the country’s political parties and an economic think tank say that “following the Swiss plan would be a recipe for disaster”.

Only the right-wing ADR party believes the Luxembourg electorate should be allowed to vote on “long-term population limits”. This party, however, has never been part of the government.

Limiting human presence in the Galapagos

Currently, population-limiting policies exist only in specific overpopulated zones within countries, says Philippe Wanner, professor at the University of Geneva’s demography and socioeconomics institute. This is true, for instance, in the Galapagos in Ecuador. The archipelago is home to many species of plants and animals, some of which exist nowhere else in the world. A 1998 law allows it to limit immigration and its populationExternal link. Wanner explains that the reasons for this law were, however, “clearly environmental”.

“Other countries do ask themselves what ‘maximum load’ they can bear, but these are still theoretical discussions,” Wanner says, adding that no country has enacted population-limiting policies by restricting immigration.

Birth control to reduce population growth

Historically, several countries have, however, tried to reduce population growth by limiting family size. In the early 1970s, Singapore introduced incentivesExternal link encouraging families to have fewer children. Iran formerly enactedExternal link family-planning policies, and similar programmes still exist in certain sub-Saharan countries in Africa.

Family size has also been controlled through coercive measures. In the late 1940s, the Indian government was one of the first to “place slowing population growth very high on its list of priorities, for the healthy development of the country,” says Gilles Pison, scientific advisor to the management of the national institute of demographic studies in France. By the 1970s, the population-control measures reached their peak with forced sterilisations.

Only China has attempted a population cap

China is the only country to have set a limit for the size of its population. It introduced its one-child policy in 1979 to slow its rapidly increasing population – not because of problems with population density but due to concerns about economic growth.

“The target was specified, though not precisely,” says Wanner. The population was “not to exceed a threshold of 1.2 to 1.4 billion residents”.

This policy led to human tragedies and a gender imbalance. The Chinese population growth rate certainly slowed, but according to Pison, other factors no doubt also contributed. And today, China is confronted with population decline and has initiated a 180-degree turnaround with measures to boost the birth rateExternal link.

In 2025, for similar reasons, Vietnam ended its two-child limitExternal link that had been in place since 1988.

Fundamentally different projects

Drawing parallels between the Swiss People’s Party initiative and China’s one-child policy is problematic. Cedric Wermuth, co-president of the Social Democratic Party, nonetheless recently ventured a comparison in an interviewExternal link with the Blick newspaper: “This initiative is one of the most extreme in Swiss history. The experiment of a fixed population ceiling was most recently attempted in China, which is a totalitarian dictatorship.”

The exact details of how to implement the initiative will only be determined if it succeeds at the ballot box. However, the three demographers interviewed by Swissinfo believe the initiative’s primary aim is not to limit the population but to curb immigration.

“It’s actually on a different level [from China’s one-child policy]” says Wanner. “There’s a strong link between authoritarian regimes and fertility policies; but debate over immigration policies also occurs in states that are not authoritarian”.

Edited by Samuel Jaberg. Adapted from French by K. Bidwell/gw