Loading player
The Democratic Union of the Center (UDC), a right-wing, nationalist and conservative party, he won the federal elections in Switzerland. From the first projections made on the basis of the ballots it was understood that the results of the polls carried out in recent weeks would be respected. As expected, the UDC is the first party: it was chosen by almost a third of the voters, obtaining 8 more seats than in the last elections and reaching 61 out of the 200 available.
The Swiss Socialist Party is second with 41 seats, two more than in the last elections. Almost identical result for the Center Alliance and the Radical Liberals (PLR) both at 14.6 percent. The party that loses the most votes and is considered the loser of these federal elections is the Greens, down by more than 4 percentage points and with 7 seats less than in 2019. The 200 deputies of the National Council and the 46 of the Council of States (elected in representation of the cantons) will vote on the new government on 13 December. They will then meet four times a year, in sessions that will last three weeks each.
In recent years the Democratic Union of the Center has increased its consensus with strong anti-immigration rhetoric. During the election campaign, as it had already done in the past, the SVP proposed changing the Swiss Constitution in order to limit the population by law to a maximum of ten million inhabitants until 2050. In this way the SVP wants to prevent new entries into the country. «Today we are close to 9 million. Our population is growing 16 times faster than Germany. In this situation the middle class is the one that suffers the most. These flows must be controlled”, said Marco Chiesa, Councilor of the States (the “upper” house of the Swiss Parliament) and national president of the UDC.
According to the Swiss economic research center KOF the quota of 10 million will instead be exceeded in 2035. The same institute underlines that without immigration the working-age population would decrease by 13 percent in 20 years, also putting the pension system in crisis.
Currently a quarter of Switzerland’s population was born abroad and in the last year immigration has grown by 26 percent, but apparently without being able to meet the labor needs of Swiss companies and commercial enterprises. In fact, 40 percent of employers say they are unable to find the employees they are looking for: those registered on the unemployment lists are 2.1 of the active population, among the lowest levels ever, and a part of the jobs it is occupied by the so-called “cross-border workers”, around 80 thousand. They are people from neighboring countries (Italy, France, Germany, Austria), who work in the country but live abroad.
The UDC has been promoting campaigns against cross-border workers for years and promised during the election campaign that it will make it much more difficult to obtain authorizations to work in Switzerland while living abroad. Among other things, he promised more controls on the borders with Italy and Austria to limit the entry of people from migratory routes.