2025 Swiss Federal Votes

Received the voting papers for the 9 February Federal vote.

There is just one ballot:

Acceptez-vous l’initiative popular
Pour une économie responsable respectant les limites planétaires (initiative pour la responsabilité environnementale)”

The proponents suggest that capitalism is incompatible with a healthy planet. But I don’t see any actual steps they are proposing be taken. So I’m confused.

Does anyone have any idea what this is actually about?

Thanks

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The initiative only mentions to set as objectives the reduction of 90% of CO2 and 50% of Nitrates (or nitrogen?) emissions by 2035.

The targets would be included the Swiss Federal Constitution. Only issue is that there is no mention on the methods or actions to meet those targets.

From the surface, it looks a bit crazy. The claims by Greenpeace Switzerland are funny. Anyway, they link to some research on how it’s possible for the Earth to host 10 billion people and have enough for everyone. A summary in FR/DE/IT here, the full article here.

To be honest, the initiative seems to be based on the estimates made by a PhD student. This only highlights the quirkiness of Swiss democracy. People collected X number of signatures and the vote was scheduled for Feb 9 2025. I’d expect it to loose by a big margin. In the remote case it wins, it will take a decade to find out and discuss on how to meet the objectives.

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Here’s a Swissinfo article that might help:

The hard no for me is that it calls for a constitutional change.

Edit - Axa is faster and more comprehensive.

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On the positive side the referendum will continue the discussion of environmental issues. On the negative side it will also lead to a discussion of the future of direct democracy. Is the threshold for a referendum too low? Is it allowable to have referenda that are so formulated that implementing the decision is likely to be impossible/very difficult to achieve?

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72% no.

Well to me it’s too vague and will tie the government to a single path when other options may be found.

I’m reminded of the 2017 vote that will do away with nuclear reactors. Second thoughts already.

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Huh? All initiatives intend to change the constitution by adding new provisions.

That said, the one here is a bunch of garbled nonsense that seems unenforceable and entirely impractical. The first polls show a pitiful 49% support which makes me optimistic that at the end at best 30% will vote for this bullshit. It is another “feel good” vote totally detached from specific policies which allows virtue signalling but has no consequences.

Only 34% Yes according to Tamedia. Thankfully, that would be economic suicide.

The debate of ideas around environmental issues can be done without a referendum.

As foreigner, it does look like the threshold for referendum is too low. A bunch of people had an idea and no matter how dumb the idea is, it became a popular vote. But, maybe that’s a feature and not a bug. Any insights on this?

And it is not a referendum, technically.

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What’s the difference? :confused:

An initiative is a standalone proposal brought up for a vote by the citizens. It requires the majority of the popular vote to pass.

A referendum is a vote called in opposition to legislation passed by the parliament. It often requires popular and cantonal majority to pass.

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And most of the initiatives fail anyway. Probably it’s how it should be.

No, it’s the opposite. Initiative requires both majorities, and referendum only popular.

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OK, now I needed to look this up.

I had previously misunderstood this. I thought cantonal majority was required to overturn laws passed by both chambers - as the canton’s votes would be reflected in the Staenderat vote. Seems I was wrong and you were mostly right.

Anyhoo. This one is going to fail either way.

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A double majority is required to amend the constitution. A popular majority for other votes.

Thanks for the explanation. I thought all the votes were the same.

A (Volks-)Initiative is constructive, it brings a specific proposition to change the constitution in a certain way. It requires 100k signatures to force a vote. There’s no formal way for the population to constructively change federal law (I believe that possibility existed in the past, but turned out to be useless and got replaced by the current mechnisms).

A Referendum OTOH is blocking (destructive if you will, as opposed to constructive), it is “successful” if the result is a No on a proposition (change of the constitution, a new/changed law, an international treaty or agreement, etc). It can be optional (on most laws, 50k signatures are required to force a vote) or mandatory (change of the constitution suggested by parliament, perhaps also certain international treaties like the Bilaterale as they affect and effectively dominate domestic lawmaking).

All changes to the constitution (technically a partial revision) require a popular vote, and a double majority to pass. A full revision of the constitution also requires a double majority, however the prior vote on instructing the parliament to work out that new constitution (a full revision) requires a single majority only (happened in the 90ies, the new constitution passed 1999).

The vote on a change of a law, or introduction of a new one, requires the popular vote only, whether to pass (proposition by parliament) or to fail (referendum successfully launched and vote forced). Only few changes of laws by parliament and other similar acts are subject to a popular vote, whether by mandatory or elective referedum.

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