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“No To a Switzerland with 10 million! (Sustainability Initiative).” On June 14, when Switzerland votes in the referendum, it will be the world’s first attempt to cap a country’s population at a specific level. Countries have previously experimented with and enforced population-control measures, notably China’s one-child policy of the 1980s. But the Swiss referendum comes against a backdrop of a dipping fertility rate, rising immigration to fill workforce needs and growing anti-immigrant sentiment. What makes it stand out is the attempt to set a population threshold, implying that beyond this level, the country's resources and public infrastructure would not be able to cope sustainably. This, in a wider context, brings to the fore an age-old question: “What is the capacity of a place (or planet) to support a population sustainably?”
Switzerland’s largest political party, the right-tilted Swiss People’s Party (SVP), is steering this initiative. Last year, 114,000 people signed the petition, making it eligible for a public vote under the country’s system of direct democracy. SVP says rising immigration has put pressure on public infrastructure, though it has not explained how it determined the “10 million” threshold. Under the proposal, Switzerland’s permanent population must be kept below 10 million until 2050.
If the population exceeds 9.5 million before then, the government must introduce measures to control population, including curbing asylum, family reunification and reviewing immigration flow under international agreements. Upon breaching the 10-million threshold, the initiative mandates the government to terminate the international agreements, including the one with the EU on the free movement of people after two years. The Swiss government and parliament have already rejected the proposal. But if it passes in the referendum, it will have to be adopted. Some opinion polls indicate support for the proposal is growing.
The proposal is startling given that Switzerland faces what is called “demographic winter”—persistently low birth rates and a steadily ageing population. The country’s fertility rate hit 1.29 children per woman in 2024, its lowest since 2001 and well below the replacement rate of 2.1. However, the country’s population continues to grow. In 2024, it reached 9 million, rising to 9.05 million permanent residents at the start of 2025. This growth comes not from natural birth but from immigration: over 93 per cent of this growth (83,000 in absolute numbers) came from immigration. Each year, Switzerland records average net migration of 70,000 people while natural growth accounts for only 6,000.
It is clear that the country depends heavily on immigrant population. And it is the same in many developed countries. The question, then, is whether a cap would lead to economic disruption. It will, as studies show for Switzer land. Immigrants not only keep its operations running, they also contribute to the economy. Importantly, this inflow has not been uninvited. As Marianna Griffini, assistant professor of international relations and anthropology at Northeastern University’s London campus, puts it: “I’m quite baffled by the reasoning behind it... I think it could have quite serious economic consequences.”
Switzerland’s experiment will have implications far beyond its borders as many countries stare at the demographic winter. In 2020, The Lancet published a global study on population trends and migration patterns between 2018 and 2100. It projects that 118 of 195 countries and territories would record “net migration rates between -1 and 1 per 1,000 population in 2100”, with the rate doubling in an additional 44 countries, including Switzerland. The referendum, thus, will be one on the future of human movement and its centrality to the host countries.
