Referendum in Switzerland: The Swiss reject the “neutrality initiative”.

Pigeons have been adorning billboards all over Switzerland for months. With an olive branch in their beaks, they promoted the “neutrality initiative” from the right-wing populist SVP. Now the birds have crashed. On Sunday, the Swiss rejected the “neutrality initiative” and did so very clearly. The result was available on Sunday afternoon around 5 p.m. According to this, the “no” share is 70.2 percent.

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there has been extensive debate in Switzerland about what exactly “neutral” means. If the initiative had been accepted at the ballot box, it would have enshrined “perpetual and armed” neutrality in the constitution. Switzerland would then no longer have been allowed to support “non-military coercive measures against belligerent states”.

The fact that the SVP is particularly concerned about the Russia sanctions is an open secret - and probably one reason for the clear failure.

No other party supported the initiative. On Sunday it is these many opponents who are cheering. Cédric Wermuth, co-president of the Social Democrats - the second strongest party in the national parliament after the SVP - says he is relieved: "This result is a commitment to the defense of Ukraine and international law. The Swiss do not want to be on Russia's side."

Stephan Rietiker from the Yes Committee admitted to Swiss television that the clear defeat showed that they had not been able to convince even “the regular customers in the right-wing bourgeois camp”.

The very clear no had become apparent. This clarity is also exciting because Switzerland has not always supported the EU sanctions against Russia. It did not adopt those imposed by the EU after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Since the full invasion in February 2022, the sanctions have largely been carried over, although with important exceptions. For example, in 2024 the EU introduced a duty of care for subsidiaries based abroad; Switzerland still does not have one in this form. This, at least according to critics, makes it possible to circumvent sanctions.

Wermuth says his Social Democratic Party now wants to use the results of the vote as an argument to achieve “full adoption and implementation” of the sanctions.

Politicians from the SVP themselves were happy to emphasize during the voting campaign that they were not interested in siding with Russia. Rather, it is important to maintain peace and ensure that Switzerland can continue to provide its “good offices”.

In the end it was probably just too unbelievable. On the one hand, there is the party leader and former Federal Councilor Christoph Blocher, who is considered the driving force behind the initiative. When he announced the venture on his show “Teleblocher,” he immediately put it in a direct connection with the Russia sanctions.

The very rich Blocher family probably also had economic interests in the success of the initiative: the media WOZ and Republik recently published research into the Blochers' business relationships with Russia. These suggest that a subsidiary traded with Russian companies that are on sanctions lists.

Roger Köppel, publisher and editor-in-chief of the most important right-wing newspaper in the country and Blocher's political foster son, also repeatedly presents himself as an admirer of Vladimir Putin in his Weltwoche. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj spoke to parliamentarians in June 2023, almost all of the SVP parliamentary group stayed away from the appearance. When the President of the Ukrainian Parliament came by for a visit the following year, two politicians from the party even got into a physical altercation with security forces.

Perhaps the party is also falling for its own rhetoric. When it comes to their political project of arming Switzerland militarily, many SVP politicians never tire of emphasizing how threatening the security situation supposedly is. The defeat is part of a series. The SVP – the strongest force in the Swiss Parliament – ​​celebrated some spectacular successes at the ballot box from the 1990s until well into the 10s. But recently she has lost there repeatedly.