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Switzerland rejects move to ease family reunification rules for naturalised Swiss citizens

The Council of States has weighed in on a bill which focused on whether naturalised or dual Swiss citizens could bring their foreign relatives from third countries to live in Switzerland. But deputies have not approved this measure.

Published: 10 September 2024 13:57 CEST

Switzerland rejects move to ease family reunification rules for naturalised Swiss citizens

MPs worry about the repercussions of allowing elderly arrivals from third countries to settle in Switzerland. Image by Nolo Laminaatti from Pixabay

With this proposed move, Swiss citizens who have become naturalised would be able to bring over their parents from a third country, provided they have sufficient financial means to live in Switzerland without resorting to social aid or seek employment, have suitable accommodation, and integrate.

The goal of the project also aimed to eliminate the discrimination suffered by the Swiss citizens compared to their EU/EFTA counterparts regarding the admission of foreign members of their family from third countries within the framework of family reunification.

As it stands now, Swiss citizens may apply for an entry permit for their non-EU/EFTA (Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein) spouse or registered partner, as well as for their children under the age of 18, but they can’t bring their parents to live in Switzerland.

This concerns mostly the naturalised (often dual national) Swiss citizens who may want to have their third-country parents live with them in Switzerland.

Family reunification conditions are less strict for family members of Swiss citizens from EU/EFTA states — they are allowed to bring their spouse or registered partner, any children and grandchildren under the age of 18, as well as their dependent parents and grandparents.

EU/EFTA citizens living in Switzerland have the same family reunification rights as the Swiss in terms of their (EU/EFTA) relatives they can bring to Switzerland, which includes parents.

Now, however, this will not come about.

Unknown consequences

For the Council of States deputies, parents of Swiss nationals who live outside the EU / EFTA, will not benefit from facilitated family reunification.

MPs noted that the number of additional people who would arrive in Switzerland under this measure could not be estimated, nor could the costs that this would generate for the country’s social security scheme.

The proposal was earlier debated in the National Council, where the narrow majority of deputies vetoed the easing of the family reunification rules, qualifying them as “unpredictable and unnecessary,” especially in terms of potentially increased immigration from third countries — which has been subject to a number restrictions.

“Therefore, adopting the project without any certainty on this point would amount to taking a leap into the unknown, which is not politically defensible.”

Deputies explained their decision not to discuss the matter further by saying that “it can’t be ruled out that this change in law could generate an unpredictable flow of new arrivals in Switzerland” — which is fuelling concerns in some quarters that Switzerland is on it is on its way, due to the influx of foreigners in recent years, to becoming a country if 10 million residents.

This parliamentary decision comes at a time when the majority of Switzerland’s residents are worried about the effect that growing immigration will have on their small country.

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With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.