- Switzerland is becoming more and more developed. The landscape initiative wants to protect the undeveloped areas more strongly.
- Today the National Council is discussing it, but this is a debate for the gallery.
- The initiators have conditionally withdrawn the initiative in favor of an indirect counter-proposal. This leads to sometimes strong criticism from experts.
Since 1891, it has been possible to change the constitution in Switzerland through initiative, says the prominent environmental lawyer Alain Griffel. According to the constitutional and administrative law professor at the University of Zurich, nothing like what has happened now with the landscape initiative has ever happened.
Griffel says: “This is the first example that I know of in which an initiative was withdrawn in favor of an indirect counter-proposal, which will not lead to an improvement in the situation in line with the concerns of the initiative, but rather to a substantial deterioration. »
We were able to counteract the political pressure with the landscape initiative
Specifically, it is about building outside of the building zones. The indirect counter-proposal that has already been decided will make the relevant rules even worse, says Griffel. This is happening, on the one hand, with various new options for building outside of the building zones and, on the other hand, with an incredibly complicated regulation that will add to the already extremely complicated regulation and will overwhelm the enforcement authorities in the cantons from A to Z, said Griffel.
The big bone of contention
The criticism is directed at the initiators who withdrew the initiative in favor of the counter-proposal and at Parliament, which passed such a counter-proposal. Ursula Schneider Schüttel is a member of the initiative committee and sat for the SP in the National Council until a few days ago. The pressure to build facilities or convert buildings outside the construction zone is very great, says Schneider Schüttel. “And we were at least able to counteract this political pressure with the landscape initiative.”
The landscape initiative was able to prevent further easing of restrictions outside of the building zones. Nothing more is politically possible. The Aargau FDP National Councilor Matthias Jauslin made a similar statement: “I think the parliament has achieved the maximum politically.” It will become clear in the future where corrections may need to be made later.
The counter-proposal does anchor a stabilization goal for buildings in non-building areas – this is what the two politicians emphasize. But the law also gives the cantons the opportunity to release agricultural buildings that are no longer needed for housing. The landscape initiative wanted to prevent this. This is the big bone of contention. Or in the words of Alain Griffel: the great deterioration.