More paid time at home for Mum and Dad? The Liberal Greens, among others, say yes.
Keystone-SDA
A people’s initiative for parental leave has reached the required number of signatures, according to one of its backers, the Liberal Green Party.
A total of 136,000 signatures have been collected for handing in to the Federal Chancellery next week, the Liberal Greens said in a press release on Saturday.
The text of the initiative was published in the Federal Gazette in April 2025, meaning a deadline of October 1, 2026 for collecting 100,000 signatures required for a public vote. The proposal has been put forward not just by the Liberal Greens, but also by the Greens, Alliance F, Travail Suisse and Women of the Centre.
It is also supported by the Social Democrats and the Evangelical Party, among other organisations.
More
More
Having children is a luxury in Switzerland. Is the US next?
The initiative calls for adequate, paid parental leave for mothers and fathers following the birth of a child. Funding is to be provided through income replacement insurance. Should their constitutional proposal be approved, implementing legislation must be in place within five years. For the first ten years, the text calls for 18 weeks’ leave for both fathers and mothers, to be take in principle one after the other. A maximum of one quarter of this period may be taken together, and the leave will not be transferable between them.
The amount of the allowance would be based essentially on the rates provided for military and civilian service; but for those on lower wages, the text provides for an allowance equal to a full month’s salary. In autumn 2024, when presenting the proposal, Liberal Green politician Kathrin Bertschy, who is also the co-head of the women’s organisation Alliance F, calculated that payroll contributions would need to rise by 0.25 percentage points to 0.75%. A study by the Ecoplan research group has estimated the annual costs at around CHF1 billion ($1.2 billion).
Calls for paid parental leave has been on the table for years. Today, working mothers are entitled to 14 weeks’ maternity allowance. In 2020, Swiss voters also approved two weeks’ paternity leave, which came into force at the start of 2021. The initiative which sparked that vote initially called for four weeks’ paid paternity leave.
How we produce news in English
Translated from Italian, reviewed by an English Department journalist.
