BERN - The Federal Council on Wednesday repeated that the new Switzerland-EU agreements should face an optional referendum, not a mandatory one. It asked the Council of States not to take up a parliamentary initiative from the upper house's political institutions committee that would write a transitional constitutional rule and force a double majority of people and cantons.
The cabinet first chose the optional path on 30 April 2025 and confirmed it in the dispatch of 13 March 2026. Wednesday's statement says that position has not moved. Ministers argue the package does not amend the constitution, and that Bilaterals I and II were approved the same way: a vote if opponents gather the signatures, decided by a simple majority of the people.
How the EU package is split for parliament
The stabilisation agreements, and the domestic laws that would apply them, sit in one federal decree. Three newer agreements, on electricity, food safety and health, sit in decrees of their own. The Federal Council wants the optional international-treaty referendum for all of them. A mandatory vote would raise the bar, because a close popular yes can still die in the cantons.
The initiative's backers say the package is large enough to deserve that higher bar. The government says stable relations with the EU, still Switzerland's dominant trading partner, are a foreign-policy choice of the ordinary kind, even if the text is long. The committee path into this summer is in our February note.
The argument waits for the autumn sitting
Parliament is not in session on Wednesday. The sentence matters because it is the line ministers will defend when the Council of States opens the package in the autumn sitting. The referendum rule will be one of the first fights in that debate, beside wage protection and dynamic law. August has not settled it. It has stopped the cabinet from drifting.