Neutrality yes, but not as a free lunch for "Autocrat bros"!
Our neutrality is not what is at stake on September 27, even though the SVP wants to make us believe so. Switzerland is neutral today, and it will stay neutral also after a NO to the so called “Neutrality Initiative”. The real question is, whether we tie our own hands by writing a rigid rulebook into the constitution and therefore rendering our sovereignty to veto powers. The people must send a clear signal to the SVP and their Autocrat bros that Switzerland’s sovereignty is not for sale.
Switzerland is not an isolated island; neither geographically, nor politically, and certainly not when it comes to our security. Just like our daily lives, the threats of our time no longer stop at borders: cyberattacks, drones, disinformation and armies redrawing borders by force.
The Neutrality Initiative answers all of this with one instruction: look away. It would forbid Switzerland from adopting its own sanctions against a state at war unless the UN Security Council orders them, and it would bar cooperation with defence partners until an attack on Switzerland is under way or directly imminent.
Together we are strong
We at Volt are the first pan-European party, with over 35 thousand members in more than 30 countries and over 300 elected representatives in local, national and European parliaments.
Together we fight for a strong, united and federal Europe which, like the Swiss Confederates in history, chooses to stand together despite different languages and cultures. That historic alliance as well as our vision for Europe was never a surrender of independence. It was - and still is - a natural decision that allows small communities to stay free against far larger powers. A Europe that defends our common values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law needs a Switzerland that can still act, not one that has written its own surrender into the constitution.
We would be giving away our Sovereignty
The initiative sounds like independence. It does the opposite. It ties the hand of the Federal Council to a body Switzerland does not permanently sit on and cannot vote in. If the UN Security Council is blocked, and it usually is, Switzerland is blocked with it.
It means that Autocrat bros with a veto in the Security Council decide what Switzerland may or may not do about a war on our continent. Bern would no longer weigh each case on its merits. It would wait. Countries that stayed out of NATO, like Austria, Ireland and Malta, still decide their own restrictive measures. We would be the only country in Europe to have written that decision out of our own hands. That is not independence. That is outsourcing responsibility and ultimately, a severe loss of sovereignty.
“Yes” would not preserve the status quo: it would dismantle it
Switzerland has not been sitting still. We have taken part in NATO's Partnership for Peace since 1996. In October 2024 Switzerland became the fifteenth member of the European Sky Shield Initiative, a joint programme for ground-based air defence, and we joined it exactly as neutral Austria did, with a written declaration ruling out any participation in an armed conflict. Nothing in it obliges us to fight anyone's war. It buys us better prices, shorter delivery times, shared training infrastructure and knowledge we could never build alone.
The initiative would ban cooperation with defence alliances unless Switzerland is under armed attack or one is directly imminent. Does that end joint exercises? Sky Shield? Cooperation against drones over our own airspace? Nobody can tell you, because a sentence in the constitution is interpreted for decades afterwards by courts and diplomats, not by the committee that drafted it.
A country that cannot say with certainty what it is allowed to do is not a reliable partner, and it is not a reassuring one for its own citizens either.
And this is precisely where the people come in
A No on 27 September changes nothing about Swiss neutrality. We do not join NATO. We do not send soldiers to anyone's war. We do not give up the good offices that made Geneva what it is. Neutrality stays exactly what it has always been, a flexible instrument of foreign policy that has served this country for two centuries and a practice that has earned us the respect of the world.
What a No preserves is the ability to judge. Each case, on its merits, decided in Bern by a government answerable to us, the people. That is the arrangement the initiative wants to replace with a standing instruction written years in advance by people who cannot know what we will face.
We are on board
For us at Volt, it is clear that a Switzerland which cannot decide on its own is not a stronger Switzerland. The Neutrality Initiative offers certainty of the worst possible kind: the certainty of never being able to react.
We would rather keep the judgement that kept this country out of two world wars and that has proven useful to everyone, also during peace time.
That is why Volt Switzerland recommends a No on 27 September.
If you want to help us campaign against this initiative, click here to donate to our campaign.