2023-10-23 18:58:00
The Popular Party won the elections and will be the leading force in parliament. Photo: Parliament Press
The far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP) won the federal elections and will be the leading force in Parliament, the final results of elections focused mainly on immigration, climate change, and public health showed this Monday.
Two environmental parties, including one that had risen sharply four years ago, were the big losers on election day. last Sunday in Switzerland, despite the record melting of the country’s glaciers.
The strong resurgence of the SVP after having suffered a great setback years ago is another sign of a shift to the right in Europe after electoral victories or advances by far-right parties in countries like Italy, Sweden or Finland in the last year.
The SVP, which proposes greater immigration control, increased its percentage of votes from 2019 by 3.4 points to 29% and won 62 seats in the National Council -the lower house of Parliament, of 200 members-, nine more than four years ago.
The results
Chaired by Marco Chiesa Since 2020, the SVP – also known as UDC, by the acronym of its name in French and Italian, official languages of Switzerland along with German – is the most voted party in Switzerland since 1995.
In second place was the Swiss Socialist Party (PS), with 17.4% of the votes, six tenths more than in 2019, which will add two seats in the National Council to reach 41, reported the Europa Press news agency.
Tied in third place, with 14.6% of the votes each, are the Christian Democrats of the Center Alliance, with 29 seats (one more than in 2019), and the liberals of the Radical Liberal Party (PLR), with 28 (one less than in 2019), respectively, in the Lower House.
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↘️ #election23 pic.twitter.com/blgA6xtZOS
— EM-electomania.es (@electo_mania) October 22, 2023
The big loser of the elections, as the polls already showed, has been the environmentalist option of the Greens.which after their noisy emergence into Parliament in 2019, when they surpassed the Christian Democrats as the fourth main political force, obtained only 9.2% of the votes this Monday, four points less than in 2019.
This condemns them to lose five seats in the National Council and remain with 23, after an electoral campaign in which climate change seemed to have weighed less in the debates than immigration or security, issues fueled by external geopolitical tensions such as war. of Ukraine or the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Even worse did the Liberal Green Party, which fell to ten seats, losing six seats since the 2019 election.
The composition of the National Councilwhich is renewed every four years, ultimately determines the composition of the Executive Branch, which is called the Federal Council and includes President Alain Berset, who plans to leave the government at the end of the year.
But the result of the legislative vote will not significantly alter the composition of the Federal Council, of seven members, where the SVP already has two seats, like the socialists and the liberals, while the Center Alliance has one.
The far-right group SVP came in first place with 29%. Photo: Parliament Press
The Swiss president is essentially “first among equals” on the councilwhere members hold ministerial portfolios and take turns each year to occupy the highest position, which is essentially ceremonial, to represent Switzerland abroad.
Berset will be succeeded next year by the centrist Viola Amherd.
During the campaign, Polls showed that Swiss voters had three main concerns: increasing the rates of the national compulsory health insurance system, based on free market rules; climate change, which has eroded glaciers in Switzerland; and immigrants and immigration.
The SVP, which was already part of the previous government coalition and has been the most voted party in the country for more than 20 years, advocates, among other things, border controls, rejection of asylum seekers, cuts in social spending and aid. to development and avoid greater rapprochement with the European Union (EU).
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