Business groups urge Swiss to reject migration quotas in referendum

Plans to curb immigration and re-introduce quotas top the issues to be voted on in a referendum in Switzerland on the 9 February 2014.

Swiss business groups rallied together on 6 January 2014 to reject a proposal to re-impose quotas on immigrants from European Union countries, warning the measure would exacerbate a shortage of skilled workers and damage firms' competitiveness.

Two more public votes on immigration would take place in Switzerland before the next federal parliamentary elections in 2015. One would be on the question of whether to extend the free movement of persons to Croatia, which joined the European Union on 1 July 2013. The Swiss Parliament would
debate the issue in 2015, and the People’s Party had already announced it would launch a referendum.

The other vote would be on an initiative of the environmentalist group Ecopop that aimed to protect the environment and natural resources by limiting immigration to 0.2% of annual population growth.

• Primary Source

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