Switzerland to vote on a cap for its population

New Yorker -   On June 14th, Switzerland will vote on whether to become the only country in the world to officially cap its population, with a limit of ten million people until 2050. (The current population is 9.1 million.) The initiative, which was put forward by the Swiss People’s Party (S.V.P.) and in recent polls has been supported by as many as fifty-two per cent of respondents, would require the government to curb growth through two main measures. 

The first, triggered as soon as Switzerland exceeds 9.5 million inhabitants, would lead to restrictions in the areas of asylum and family reunification. If the population surpasses ten million for two consecutive years, the second measure would kick in, requiring the termination of the Free Movement of Persons agreement, which allows citizens of the European Union to work, study, and live in Switzerland (and vice versa). This move would rupture Switzerland’s relations with the E.U., its closest partner in trade and security. “The whole package of bilateral agreements would be at stake,” Michael Siegenthaler, a labor economist at the public university E.T.H. Zurich, said. “It’s quite likely that the European Union would cancel all of them.” A population ceiling is more or less unprecedented; the closest comparison might be conservation laws that limit human settlement in ecologically fragile places like the Galápagos Islands.