More surprising it didn't pass the "majority of cantons" either (both are required for initiatives like this), I would have expected it to pass (there are a lot of smaller/rural/alpine cantons which tends to vote more conservative).

> The current system permitting freedom of movement across the continent while devolving immigration policy entirely to members creates a fundamental tension the EU needs to resolve. Because otherwise, Berlin can basically dictate EU immigration single handedly, which is bound to generate backlash even if they run a perfect programme.

You do realize German nationals (followed by French) are the top contingent in term of immigration to Swizerland.

(Only EU citizens benefit from freedom of movement to settle in Switzerland)

> You do realize German nationals (followed by French) are the top contingent in term of immigration to Swizerland

Yes. I’m also conceding to the SVP the observation that a good fraction of said nationals are recently naturalized.

If the SVP says it, it must be true :) What's their sources? I'm sure they could find a couple of anecdotes, doesn't make it significant.

Assume it's true for the sake of argument. Do you think that would be an issue then?

What's the issue with WSJ? "people familiar with the matter" is standard lingo, means the journalist and editors have vetted the sources (multiple).

& many times the sources don't want to reveal their identity or go on record. A sort of tradeoff--to get the info they have to protect the source

"You may not talk to the media" is pretty standard language in US employee contracts so obviously these people don't want to fireable offenses on the front page of the newspaper.

I saw several mentions of corruption. But who brought it to the administrations attention. Envy and corruption. Stifle competition, by greasing palms you are familiar with.

Seems like it's 4 per hour on Rotterdam/Utrecht, seems similar to Geneva/Lausanne with 6 per hour.

In any case, I think commuters are fine with every 15 min, as long as there's enough seats. (for long distance like trains, my feeling is that frequency below 15min doesn't have a lot of impact, unlike shorter distance public transport like tram/bus/subway)

Yeah there's tons of work ongoing. Lots of line close to the big hubs have ongoing construction to eventually switch to 15min takt.

Improvements on various train station (new underground stations in Geneva and Luzern, extra platforms, etc.).

https://company.sbb.ch/en/railway-development/future-rail/na...

(for example, there's also lots of tram, etc. projects)

> The public version of Gemini is ridiculous. At least half their search "answers" are just wrong.

That's not Gemini, that's AI Mode (in Search), they're different products built by fairly different part of Google (actually one is built by Deepmind).

(I don't think it's much comparable to https://gemini.google.com/app at least in the past you'd get very different results)

And it's extremely poor marketing by Google to do this - the general perception people have is that Google AI is dumb due to this.

To be fair, this is classic Google.

As I keep saying, they should win this AI stuff, but I have complete faith in their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Especially after we saw how happy the EU was to negotiate (they didn't budge) when https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Swiss_immigration_initiat... passed.

The new initiative is basically the same, but with no leeway to ignore it.

(that said I suspect if it passes, there will be something tied to the bilateral referendum in 2027/28 to try to supersede it)

> if it passes, there will be something tied to the bilateral referendum in 2027/28 to try to supersede it

This is my thinking, too. If it really comes down to Chexit-or-nothing, we’ll have another referendum.

That was the UK's thinking, too. "We won't have a hard Brexit! Of course they'll negotiate a plan!"

And then the UK delivered an Article 50 notice. That isn’t something this referendum would force.

The UK's referendum was also non-binding, in theory.

> UK's referendum was also non-binding, in theory

If SVP gets control of government they’ll probably try to Chexit irrespective of any referendum power. That’s orthogonal to this question.

Well there's anyway going to be a referendum about the bilateral. (which is why I find the initiative somewhat stupid, you can vote on the real deal in a few years, about whether people want or do not want to have agreements with the EU, instead of hiding it behind a fake/emotional reason)

> This referendum is an attempt by the members of SVP/UDC, the right-most party, to show that on immigration topics they have more popular support than what their relative power

Not really about immigration but EU relationship. Almost every SVP initiative tries to create a contradiction in the constitution with foreign agreements to force an "exit".

> The strong point of the Swiss political system is that the government is, by law, made up by all significant parties.

It's a tradition, not a rule (the composition of the council is simply the result of an election by the parliament).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_formula_(Swiss_politics)

> It's a tradition, not a rule

Amended, thanks!

Germany (16% of recent immigration), followed by France and Italy (12% and 11%).

https://cms.news.admin.ch/fileservice/sdweb-docs-prod-nsbcch...

(page 5)

"the swiss equivalent"

As OP explains, freedom of movement can't be stopped in isolation from the rest of the bilaterals.

(btw funnily Schengen is just about the border control, we're talking about freedom of movement which is a different thing, e.g. UK wasn't in Schengen but the freedom of movement applied to UK as well before brexit, tho I guess people use Schengen interchangeably)