Tighter asylum criteria split Swiss politicians and organisations

More specific criteria for asylum rejections are controversial Keystone-SDA

A parliamentary committee wants to establish more precise criteria for the removal of asylum-seekers. Associations and organisations believe the proposal goes too far – whereas the right-wing Swiss People’s Party doesn’t think it goes far enough.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The House of Representatives’ Committee on Political Institutions proposes that the grounds on which deportation is deemed unreasonable should be exhaustively listed in the law. The consultation on the relevant proposal ended on Friday.

Fixed criteria are intended to clarify in which cases provisional admission must be ordered. Specifically, the open-ended wording “in situations such as” is to be removed from the Foreign Nationals and Integration Act.

In future, only war, civil war, general violence or a medical emergency would be admissible grounds. Consequently, the authorities would have less discretion. Ultimately, the draft bill aims to reduce the number of provisional admissions in order to save costs.

The draft bill stems from a parliamentary initiative by People’s Party parliamentarian Gregor Rutz.

Criticism from left and right

According to the left-wing Social Democratic Party, this means the individual circumstances of those seeking protection cannot be taken into account. Particularly vulnerable individuals would be excluded from protection, the party said. It rejects the bill.

For the left-wing Greens, the bill is unacceptable, the party said. The changes would contradict the fundamental humanitarian values that Switzerland upholds internationally. This is not only a disregard for human values, but also potentially a violation of fundamental human rights.

The Centre Party, on the other hand, is in favour of the amendment, as it provides greater clarity. However, the legislative change is only of limited use, it said. According to the Centre Party, a more comprehensive reform would be necessary.

Rather than reforming the system, the People’s Party said it would prefer to abolish provisional admission altogether. The party welcomes the general direction of the bill but feels the planned clarifications do not go far enough. It is calling for the health emergency clause to be removed from the bill.

More complicated and costly

The Swiss Association of Municipalities also welcomes the proposal. The association expects this to lead to a clearly defined, more restrictive practice and hopes it will ease the burden on municipalities.

Instead of clarity, the Conference of Cantonal Directors of Justice and Police fears that the amendment will lead to additional legal uncertainty. As a result, proceedings could become more expensive and time-consuming, which is why the conference rejects the bill.

The Swiss Association of Cities also warns of an “enforcement crisis at local level” and a “massive shift of costs and problems” from the federal government to the cities. Both the Swiss Association of Cities and the Federal Commission on Migration reject the legislative amendment. The latter wrote that it is neither legally convincing nor sensible in terms of asylum policy.

Medically and ethically unjustifiable

Sharp criticism is also coming from medical organisations. From the perspective of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and the Swiss Medical Association, such a clarification is medically and ethically unjustifiable. It is argued that the planned deletion would primarily exclude chronically ill people from protection. Both organisations emphasise that the courts already apply very strict standards.

These have already confirmed the existing legal framework on several occasions, argues Swiss Refugee Aid. Under the current legal framework, a person’s individual circumstances can be taken into account. A change could mean that complex cases of hardship would no longer receive protection in future.

According to the commission’s report, a total of 20,990 provisional admissions were granted between 2022 and the end of October 2025. In around 18% of cases, the reasons for this were not statistically recorded and were presumably based on individual, cumulative factors. These cases would be affected by the new regulations, it said.

Join the debate:

Adapted from German by AI/ts

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]