BERN. The government has chosen its side in the loudest argument of the autumn, and it is not the side the polls favour. In its message to parliament published on Thursday, the Federal Council recommends rejecting the popular initiative for a restriction on fireworks, which voters will decide on 29 November. The text would end the sale of noise-producing fireworks, bangers and firecrackers above all, to private individuals, and ban private use of them altogether.
The government does not dispute the nuisance. Loud fireworks disturb a real share of the population, it concedes in the message, and can trigger severe reactions in animals. But it judges the noise and the particulate emissions to be temporary and comparatively low, notes that many people in Switzerland associate deeply positive emotions with setting off fireworks, and concludes that nationwide restrictions on sale and use are unnecessary and disproportionate. The decisive argument is federalist: cantons and communes, the message says, already possess the legal basis to restrict fireworks where local circumstances demand it.
The polls point the other way
That advice lands against a headwind. The YouGov barometer published this week, 2,949 voters questioned between 7 and 19 October, puts the initiative at 62 per cent yes, 33 per cent no and only 6 per cent undecided, the most settled picture of the four November proposals. Support runs deepest among women, at 69 per cent, against 54 per cent of men. An earlier Leewas survey reached 65 per cent yes and found sympathy for the ban stretching into the grassroots of the FDP and even the SVP, parties whose leaderships preach exactly the restraint the government practised on Thursday.
What the vote would actually change
The initiative does not touch professional displays, licensed events or silent fireworks; it targets the retail market in noise. Switzerland’s rules today are a patchwork. Several communes ban private fireworks outright, many restrict them to national holidays, and others leave the field open, which is precisely the variance the initiative committee wants to erase and the government wants to preserve.
Parliament will now debate the message before the campaign enters its final month. Historically, a recommendation from Bern carries weight at the ballot box. But on 29 November the weight of public patience with midnight bangers may carry more. The government has five weeks to make the case for federalism; the committee has five weeks to defend a lead most campaigners would happily trade for.