Swiss voters reject neutrality and food initiatives

Swiss voters rejected both the neutrality and food initiatives on September 27, prompting relief among most party leaders in a post-vote discussion on SRF. The clearest surprise was the scale of the opposition to the neutrality proposal.

Swiss People’s Party president Marcel Dettling said the campaign, which included four million francs invested by Christoph Blocher, had at least put neutrality on the agenda. He argued that how Switzerland is perceived abroad matters more than how it sees its own neutrality, adding that the country was not currently viewed as neutral.

Leaders from the Free Democratic Party, the Centre and the Social Democratic Party disagreed. Centre president Philipp Matthias Bregy said the result had strengthened Switzerland’s international role. FDP co-president Susanne Vincenz-Stauffacher said approving the initiative would have frozen the country’s policy and prevented an appropriate response to events. She also said it would have meant acting in the interests of Russia, the aggressor.

SP vice-president Jon Pult said the vote protected Switzerland’s ability to act in foreign policy. He argued that approval would have led neighbouring countries and other states to see Switzerland not as neutral, but as supporting Russia. Dettling replied that countries have interests, not friends.

The discussion turned to the next vote, on changes to the War Materiel Act that would ease weapons exports. Switzerland will vote on the proposal in November. Bregy said it could help the country prepare for the next crisis and avoid acting without solidarity. Pult argued that Swiss weapons could end up in conflict zones, though not in Ukraine. Dettling said a compromise would help preserve a Swiss arms industry, while Vincenz-Stauffacher backed the change as an important step towards solidarity.

The party leaders broadly agreed that the food initiative went too far and was too extreme. Vincenz-Stauffacher called it paternalistic, while leaders other than Dettling also said it had raised important issues. Asked how to respond to the recent hot summer and drought, Dettling said climate change had lengthened growing seasons and was not only bad for farmers, and called for adaptation measures such as air conditioning in care homes.

Pult said severe climate change posed an existential threat to Swiss agriculture and criticised the SVP for previously denying human-caused climate change. Bregy said ideological debate was not productive and called for practical solutions, including using water from reservoirs and glaciers.