Swiss Direct Democracy - Update on March 3rd votes
Henry Ferguson explains the implications of the March 3rd Swiss votes where the People decided to raise the state pension amount but not the retirement age. The Swiss Government and Parliament in failing to propose a counter measure ‘dropped the ball,’ handing the initiative to the Swiss Association of Trade Unions. He compares that foul-up with the consensual success of the June 2023 vote on climate change legislation - both votes were on Popular Initiatives but the political outcomes differ completely because, this time, central government and the right-wing parties didn't play the game. He goes on to speculate that unless the Government and Parliament up their game and engage more directly with their partner in Direct Democracy, the People, a Yes vote in a forthcoming mandatory referendum on an expected new agreement with the EU isn’t assured.
Last week I commented on the results of the Swiss Popular Initiatives on 3rd March and like the People on the Sunday, the next day the media – both Swiss and International – had their own field day.
Internationally, Le Monde spoke about a “political earthquake”, and a “shock vote,” while Die Welt called the vote a “sensation on the left”. In Zurich, the Tages Anzeiger repeated the same message: “a sensation - it’s a historic verdict - never before have Swiss voters accepted an initiative on pensions. Never before has the left achieved a majority at the ballot box with an expansion of the welfare state. Never before has it won over so many middle-class voters.”
My favourite quote, however, came from the Tribune de Genève: “Beyond pensions, this clear Yes showed the Government and Parliament the way forward…..this wake-up call will do them no harm.”
Two Popular Initiatives – but vastly different political outcomes
And it’s this last quote which spurred me to look a bit further into the history of last Sunday’s Initiative by comparing it to what happened with the 2019 “Glacier Initiative” when it was finally (indirectly) voted on in June 2023.
The Glacier Initiative was launched because the Government had been doing more or less nothing about climate change, and the necessary 100,000 signatures were easily obtained within the required 18 months. The Initiative was extreme in that fossil fuels were to be completely banned by 2050. Government and Parliament responded with a pragmatic counter-proposal which, whilst also targeting net zero CO2 by 2050, permitted emissions compensation in specified circumstances. After extensive bargaining over the content of the counter-proposal, the Initiative was temporarily withdrawn to allow a popular vote which took place in June 2023 and a majority of 59% of the People approved the counter-proposal.
So the end result was that an acceptable political compromise was reached and the country is now united behind a climate change action plan up to 2050.
The contrast between the above consensual outcome and that of last Sunday’s 13th month pension payment Initiative is like night and day. Both were the results of Popular Initiatives but the similarity ends there.
Last Sunday’s Initiative was the second time the left had tried to increase pensions, the first being with the Initiative “AVSPlus”, a proposal to increase pensions by 10% launched by USS, the Association of Trade Unions, in 2013 and voted on in 2016. The People and Cantons followed the Government & Parliamentary recommendations and voted against (by 59% and 18/5, respectively) and there was no counter-proposal from central government. Four years later, in 2020, the USS launched a second such Initiative - this time to increase state pension by 8.3% - which was what we voted on last Sunday, 3rd March 2024 – once again with no counter-proposal from Government / Parliament.
The turnaround compared with 2016 is significant - 58% and 15/8 in favour from People and Cantons, respectively.
What lessons can be drawn?
The political commentators are unanimous – Government & Parliament dropped the ball and, at least on the issue of cost of living, they had lost contact with the electorate. Not offering a counter-proposal was a huge political error and the minister in charge of the government’s campaign was lacking in experience and charisma compared with the USS leader Pierre-Yves Maillard.
Even more serious, Government and Parliament are now in complete disarray on how to handle the question of funding the pension increase and their negotiating position viz à viz the USS is weak, to say the least. The contrast to the consensual outcome of the Glacier Initiative described above is striking.
Lastly - and this could very easily be the sting in the tail - an Initiative sponsored by the socialist party to limit health insurance premiums to 10% of taxable income is on the agenda for the quarterly Direct Democracy vote on 9th June 2024 and the driver for that Initiative is exactly the same as that for last Sunday’s vote - the cost of living. And one thing’s for sure - Maillard will be leading from the front again and the same People could well be supporting him on 9th June just like they did on 3rd March.
And the knock-on effect?
In my previous article, I speculated that Maillard might well be the elephant in the room during this year’s Swiss-EU bilateral negotiations, mainly because salary protection and movement of labour are one of the remaining points of contention in the negotiation. In a lengthy article in Le Temps (top quality independent French Swiss newspaper) last Monday, one commentator analysed this precise point and confirmed that, in his view, a “Yes” result in the mandatory referendum forecast for 2026, where the People will be asked if they accept the agreement between Switzerland and the EU, was - based on current respective negotiating positions and Maillard’s scepticism - anything but certain.
It’s significant that last week a number of media outlets referred to Maillard as “the most powerful man in Switzerland”. For the moment at least, the People appear to have found a winning leader - and Government and Parliament don’t yet know how to handle it. That’s why I really liked the Tribune de Genève quote above - the current Swiss political establishment - at least the central part – now needs to do quite a bit of work on improving relations with its Direct Democracy partner - the People.