BERN. The first poll of the campaign for the 27 September referendum has given the neutrality initiative a poor start, with 54 per cent of those surveyed intending to reject the proposal and 42 per cent in favour. Four per cent remain undecided, according to the SBC survey carried out by the gfs.bern institute and published on 21 August.
The popular initiative, launched by the association Pro Suisse, would write a stricter concept of neutrality into the Federal Constitution. Switzerland would be declared permanently and armedly neutral, barred from joining any military or defence alliance, and forbidden from imposing sanctions on belligerent states except those ordered by the United Nations. Cooperation with such alliances would be allowed only if Switzerland itself were under military attack or an attack were being prepared.
Federal Councillor Ignazio Cassis, head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, launched the government campaign against the text at a press conference in Bern on 11 August. The Federal Council and Parliament recommend a No vote without a counter proposal. The referendum, Cassis said, is not about whether Switzerland will remain neutral. “Switzerland has been and is neutral, and it will remain neutral.”
The government argument is that the present practice already meets the legal duties of a permanently neutral state. Switzerland does not join NATO, does not take part in armed conflicts between third countries, and already implements United Nations sanctions as a UN member. What the initiative would add, officials say, is a ban on autonomous sanctions against warring states, a step that would shrink Bern’s room for manoeuvre when international law is breached.
Support for the text is concentrated among voters of the Swiss People’s Party, 86 per cent of whom told gfs.bern they intend to vote Yes. Every other major party’s electorate leans toward rejection. Among Swiss citizens living abroad, the balance of opinion is almost identical to the domestic sample.
Political scientists at gfs.bern note that popular initiatives tend to lose support as a campaign progresses, once the weaknesses of a text are debated more fully. On that pattern, a rejection on 27 September is currently the most likely outcome. The Yes camp still has five weeks of posters, debates and postal ballots in which to close the gap.
The same ballot paper carries a second, less noticed initiative on food security, which asks the Confederation to encourage the production and consumption of plant based foods. No major party backs that text, yet the Yes and No camps are neck and neck: 49 per cent against, 47 per cent in favour, with 4 per cent undecided. After a hot, dry summer, the idea of conserving water and raising self sufficiency has gained some traction, particularly among Swiss Abroad, 58 per cent of whom say they will vote Yes.
Claude Longchamp’s successor at gfs.bern, Lukas Golder, observed that the food security proposal’s weaknesses have not yet been debated abroad, and that momentum for a No vote could still build. The same caution applies in reverse to the neutrality text: a late swing is possible, but the opening numbers do not favour the committee.
Postal ballot envelopes for the 27 September vote begin reaching households at the end of August. The Federal Council’s official pamphlet, already distributed, sets out the government’s case in the four national languages. The Pro Suisse committee will spend the coming weeks arguing that only a constitutional lock can stop what it calls an elastic reading of neutrality under foreign pressure.
Whatever the result, the vote will not abolish Swiss neutrality. It will decide whether the constitution continues to leave the Federal Council the discretion to apply that neutrality case by case, or whether it writes a narrower script into the highest law. That is the choice now sitting on kitchen tables from Geneva to the Grisons.