Two million more inhabitants in twenty years. Pensions still under pressure. Skyrocketing rents. Saturated infrastructures. And yet we are still being told that more and more immigration is the solution to all our problems. The FER's argument about a «Switzerland of 10 million» deserves to be taken apart point by point.
When the employers“ lobbies run out of solid arguments, they always bring out the same scarecrows: pensions, hospitals, access to the European market, ”essential labour".
The analysis by the Fédération des entreprises romandes of the «No Switzerland for 10 million» initiative is a perfect illustration of this mechanism of fear. The problem is that its economic foundations are fragile, its shortcuts dangerous and its conclusions ideological.
1. The central lie: more immigration = more AVS funding
We are repeatedly told that without mass immigration, the AHV will collapse. It's not true.
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Between 2002 and 2024, the Swiss population increased by +2 million inhabitants, mainly through immigration.
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Over the same period, the AVS is still structurally in deficit.
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Why? Because Because :
⮕ Immigration artificially delays a problem that it exacerbates in the long term.
A healthy pension system is based on productivity, real wages, investment and the birth rate - not on a permanent migratory spigot.
2. The false dilemma: capping = «breaking with Europe».»
The FER claims that limiting the population is tantamount to «breaking with Europe» and jeopardising the bilateral agreements. This is a legal blackmail.
Switzerland was already exporting massively to the EU before free movement.
EU exports more towards Switzerland than the other way round.
Our market is strategically solvent, The EU has no rational interest in closing it.
⮕ What is known as «market access» has become a a tool for political submission, not a balanced commercial relationship.
3. Health, construction, transport: organised dependency
We are told that these sectors «cannot function without European workers». This is partly true. because wage dumping has made them dependent.
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Migratory underpressure :
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Then we justify the permanent importation of labour... to compensate for the damage caused by the initial dumping.
⮕ It's not an economic inevitability, it's an organised model.
4. Saturated infrastructure, housing nowhere to be found: the FER's big omission
The federation dares to claim that the initiative offers «no response» to saturated infrastructures.
In reality, it's uncontrolled immigration that has created saturation :
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Soaring rents
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Accelerated concreting
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Transport congestion
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School, medical and energy pressure
Refusing to see the link between massive demographic flows and structural imbalances is either blindness or bad faith.
5. The real unspoken message: Switzerland is no longer run for its citizens
Behind this rhetoric lies a simple reality:
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Switzerland is managed as an economic platform
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No longer as a nation
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Demographics are becoming an adjustment variable to maintain :
⮕ A population is not a raw material.
Conclusion
The «No Switzerland for 10 million» initiative does not threaten prosperity.
It calls into question a model of artificial growth based on :
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migratory pressure
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social dumping
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infrastructure debt
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and the gradual dilution of popular sovereignty
The real danger for Switzerland is not setting a demographic limit.
The real risk is that none will be set.