Swiss Reject Stricter Neutrality, Preserving Government Leeway
(Bloomberg) — Swiss voters rejected a bid to enshrine stricter neutrality in the constitution, preserving the government’s freedom to interpret the doctrine flexibly and maintain sanctions against Russia.
The initiative received just under 30% support, with more than 70% voting against it, according to final government numbers on Sunday. That’s an even more decisive rejection than polls had suggested.
Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said that the Swiss government will stick to its established practice of interpreting the doctrine flexibly.
“This result is not a vote against neutrality,” he told reporters in Bern. “Switzerland was neutral yesterday, it is neutral today and it will remain so in the future as well.”
The proposal would have declared Switzerland’s neutrality “eternal and armed,” barred the country from joining military alliances and prevented it from imposing sanctions not approved by the United Nations.
The initiative was a response to Switzerland’s decision to mirror European Union sanctions against Russia following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Supporters argued that the move breached the country’s neutrality — a view echoed by Moscow, which urged Swiss voters to back the proposal.
Cassis said Sunday that Switzerland decided to mirror the sanctions because the fate of Ukraine touched the interests of a small country like Switzerland directly.
“We depend on a world in which rules are respected,” he said.
The government, parliament and all major parties except the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, or SVP, opposed the initiative. Billionaire former SVP leader Christoph Blocher spent some 3.9 million francs ($4.7 million) campaigning for it.
The vote wasn’t a verdict on neutrality itself, which remains widely supported. Instead — as outlined by Cassis — it preserves the government’s ability to apply the doctrine pragmatically rather than bind it via stricter constitutional rules.
It’s the second SVP-backed initiative rejected at the ballot this year. In June, voters turned down a proposal to cap Switzerland’s population at 10 million. Under the country’s system of direct democracy, citizens can be called to the polls up to four times a year.
In a separate ballot on Sunday, voters also rejected a plan to produce more food locally. The proposal, which would have indirectly reduced domestic meat production, received less than 28% support.
(Updates with final results, government quotes starting in second paragraph.)
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