A RECENT Swiss newspaper cartoon depicts the ship of state bearing down on a small boat crammed with migrants, as the lookouts cry “Hard right!” That is the direction Swiss voters opted for in their parliamentary election on October 18th.
If any prosperous European country has been left untouched by Europe’s migrant crisis, it is Switzerland. The government of the Alpine country had planned to admit about 29,000 asylum-seekers in 2015. Over the summer, as hundreds of thousands of refugees surged through the Balkans into neighbouring Austria and Germany, Switzerland expanded its annual intake of asylum-seekers—to about 30,000. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, and thus is not part of the mandatory relocation scheme for asylum applicants which most EU members now face.
The country’s mountainous terrain and lack of major rail hubs seem to have kept it off of the major migrant routes. Nevertheless, voters handsomely rewarded right-wing politicians who had campaigned hard on immigration issues. The Swiss People’s Party (SVP), already the biggest in the federal assembly, pushed its share of the popular vote to 29%, surpassing its previous...Continue reading
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