Swiss government rejects referendum on additional costs for US fighter jets

Federal Council does not want a referendum on additional costs for US fighter jets Keystone-SDA

According to the federal government, the people should not be asked to vote on the additional costs for the F-35 fighter jets. It rejects a motion from the Social Democratic party calling for a supplementary credit to be submitted to Parliament in the form of a federal decree subject to a referendum.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

In 2020, voters approved the federal decree on the CHF6 billion commitment credit for the purchase of 36 new fighter jets by 50.1%. On this basis, Parliament approved the commitment credit for the F-35 fighter jets in 2022, wrote parliamentarian Franziska Roth in the motion.

The simple federal decree is not subject to a referendum, the government explained in its negative stance on Wednesday. The constitution does not provide for a financial referendum. Decisions of principle and planning decisions of major importance could be subject to an optional referendum. However, they should not be financial decisions.

What is your opinion? Join the debate:

Translated from German by DeepL/jdp

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail].