The Swiss government has proposed six motorway expansion projects to parliament – four of them for the A1.
The Swiss voted on Sunday on a set of hotly contested issues: a motorway expansion project, changes to the tenancy law, and a new standardised financing model for healthcare services.
Projections by the gfs.bern research institute suggest a “yes” vote for a healthcare financing reform and “no” to expansion of Swiss motorways and easier evictions of tenants; the other tenancy issue (tighter subletting rules) remains uncertain at the time of publishing.
Final outcomes are expected by early evening.
Motorways – CHF5 billion expansion project on the brink
It could be a bad day for the government’s road infrastructure plans: projections suggest a tight outcome, but with an estimated 52% rejecting a CHF5 billion ($5.6 billion) motorway expansion package.
The plans, approved by parliament last year, involve projects at six “neuralgic points” of the country’s motorway system, notably on the A1 near the capital, Bern, and between Geneva and Lausanne.
Backers, including the government and business groups, argued that traffic jams had been ballooning in recent years and that investment was needed to catch up with a growing population.
The Swiss motorways are marked in red. Four of the six expansion projects – marked with the construction site symbol – affect the A1 motorway (in bold).
swissinfo.ch
Left-wing and environmentalist circles countered that while the population has grown in recent decades, traffic has increased exponentially more; bigger motorways would simply fuel this further, they argued. Raising concerns about climate change, they called for better traffic management and more investment in public transport.
Authorities said they were already investing in other forms of transport, including rail, and that the roads project should be seen as part of a wider strategy. As the campaign progressed, however, their arguments lost backing: polls showed support slipped from a slight majority to 47% two weeks before the vote.
Tenancy laws – tougher subletting rules, eased evictions?
Voters have also been pondering two recent changes to the delicate issue of tenancy law, which affects the majority of Swiss. Around 60% of the population – the highest percentage in Europe – rents a home.
Last year parliament ratified two amendments initiated by right-wing politicians that revise the law in favour of landlords. One modification toughens the conditions for subletting. The other has made it easier for landlords to terminate leases early to use a property for their own purposes. Both proposals relate to residential and commercial properties. Unhappy with the changes, Asloca, a national tenants’ association, launched a referendum.
The results are still unclear at the time of writing, but according to projections at 1.30pm, 52% may reject the move to ease evictions but the subletting proposal is undecided. But the numbers are still not final.
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Voters to decide if Swiss landlords need extra rights
Under the new provisions, landlords would have greater leeway to prevent tenants from subletting their apartment. Landlords would be able to refuse “abusive” subletting, for instance, if an apartment is sublet at too high a price. The proliferation of online platforms like Airbnb has led to a surge in such cases, the parliament and government argue.
Opponents warned that the second modification would make it easier for landlords to terminate leases and throw tenants out of their apartments under the pretext of personal use. They accuse landlords of wanting to take advantage of the housing shortage and re-let apartments at higher prices. Real estate circles and the right meanwhile argue that the legal revisions are targeted and fair and do not concern rents. They simply clarify concepts that already exist in current law, they claim.
The most recent poll published 11 days ago indicated that support for the two revisions had plummeted over the course of the campaign. Some 53% said they planned to reject the reform to make evictions easier, while the proposal for tougher rules on subletting was finely balanced (50% still in favour).
Healthcare – voters set to approve rare case of system reform.
Finally, the perennial question of healthcare financing was on the menu, with voters deciding on a proposal aimed at boosting the volume of outpatient procedures and disincentivising costly inpatient – i.e. with at least one night spent in hospital – care.
Initial projections on Sunday showed a majority of 54% – by no means a comfortable victory – were prepared to accept a new financing model for healthcare services, which will see cantons and insurance firms fund all types of treatment according to a standardised model.
Concretely, cantons will from 2028 finance at least 26.9% of outpatient costs, rather than health insurers paying the whole bill, as is currently the case. The same repartition of costs will also apply for inpatient care and for nursing homes.
Regine Sauter from the centre-right Radical-Liberal Party said on Sunday that the likely result was a “milestone for the future of the Swiss health system”. Not only does it help to boost outpatient treatment (Switzerland lags behind its neighbours on this), but it also shows that the Swiss health system is “reformable”, she told Swiss public television, SRF.
Similarly to the pension system, proposals to overhaul the Swiss healthcare system often struggle at the ballot box.
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Will Swiss voters accept standardised financing of healthcare?
Backed by most political parties and healthcare groups, the reform is one of the biggest ever proposed for the 30-year-old health insurance act and comes as premiums have been steadily rising – to the dismay of lower-earning households.
On Sunday, David Roth from the left-wing Social Democrats, who had opposed the reform, said people were tired of constantly rising premiums. The argument that the latest reform would help tackle this – authorities reckon it could lead to savings of CHF440 million per year – will have to be closely tracked, he told SRF.
Ultimately, Roth said, the referendum campaign, which had been largely driven by trade unions worried about quality of care in hospitals and nursing homes, had lost against “one of the most powerful lobby groups in Switzerland” – healthcare associations.
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