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Switzerland, a wealthy country that has historically embraced free movement and foreign investment, is about to vote on whether to cap its population — and restrict immigration measures to do so.
Sunday’s referendum comes after the country’s population increased 10% in the 10 years up to the end of 2025, when it stood at just over 9.1 million. For the first time, the country had more people over 65 than under 20. Net migration and the birth rate fell last year.
Relatively low taxation has helped make Switzerland home to global conglomerates like consumer goods giant Nestle , pharmaceutical heavyweight Novartis and other multinational firms in finance, luxury goods and tech. It has one of the world’s highest concentrations of billionaires and a much stronger GDP per capita rate than many other developed economies.
At the end of 2024, 41% of the population had a “migration background,” a term applied to immigrants and their Swiss-born children, per official data, which also shows 32.5% of the country’s permanent residents are first-generation immigrants. An estimated 1.4 million EU citizens live in Switzerland, comprising around 16% of the country’s population. Another 340,000 EU citizens cross the border daily to work there.
A recent poll found that 52% of respondents would reject the population cap, while 45% were in favor.
How would the population cap work?
But if voters back the population curb proposal, the country’s Federal Council and parliament will have to roll out measures to curb population growth until 2050.
Immigration systems would be tightened if the population exceeded 9.5 million at any point over the next 24 years, with asylum and family reunification programs first in line to face cuts. Switzerland’s freedom of movement initiative with the European Union would also potentially end, should the population rise above the 10-million threshold.
Switzerland is part of the border-free Schengen travel zone, along with many large EU economies. The bloc and the country also have an agreement to allow free movement of each other’s citizens, allowing them to live and work in each other’s territories, provided they have a job or another source of income.
Switzerland’s right-wing SVP party is urging voters to “send a clear signal” to policymakers to curb what it calls “overwhelming” population growth.
In a statement last week, the SVP said that voting for the population cap would still allow 40,000 people to move to Switzerland each year, but lawmaker Piero Marchesi said population growth had caused problems for public services, wages, the price of rent, education and the labor market.
Companies headquartered in Switzerland have argued that putting significant caps on immigration would dent the country’s competitive edge and weigh on its struggling economy, which has faced sluggish growth, a surging currency, disinflation and U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff regime.
Economiesuisse — a trade body that counts Amazon Web Services, Roche , Google and Johnson & Johnson among its 100,000 members — has opposed the population cap initiative.
Chief Economist Rudolf Minsch said in an emailed statement to CNBC that Switzerland’s prosperity depends on “openness, innovation and strong economic relations with Europe.”
“We understand that concerns about housing, infrastructure and population growth must be taken seriously, and these challenges require pragmatic political solutions,” he said.
“Rigid immigration caps are not the right answer, particularly if they risk undermining the bilateral agreements with the European Union, which are of central importance to the Swiss economy.”
Minsch added that Switzerland’s reliance on highly qualified foreign workers, especially in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, technology and healthcare.
“Major restrictions on immigration would weaken innovation, growth and competitiveness, while making it harder for companies to attract international talent,” he said.
Speaking to CNBC’s Carolin Roth at the Swiss Economic Forum last week, Nestle CEO Philipp Navratil described how attractive the country was to outside investors, adding: “It is important that these conditions in Switzerland are maintained.”
“We must not take this for granted; it was created through a lot of hard work and through a willingness to drive reforms,” he added.
He said his company had nine factories, three research centers in the country, and “our main share of research and development still takes place in Switzerland — this has been the case for 160 years.”
“Reliability is found in Switzerland, because quality exists in Switzerland, because talent exists in Switzerland, because Switzerland has created and established framework conditions that are simply attractive for a global company,” he added.
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At the same conference, UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti said he worried about “extreme initiatives.”
“Switzerland has 30% of foreign-born people, almost like in Australia, twice as Germany,” he said. “And that leads to certain frustration within society. But it’s not a way to solve the problem.”
UBS is one of Switzerland’s biggest employers, with around 33,500 of its employees based in the country.
Joao B. Duarte, a professor of economics at Portugal’s Nova School of Business and Economics, told CNBC in an email that a population cap could damage Switzerland’s credibility in various ways.
“If firms believe access to European labor may become more uncertain, investment decisions can shift well before the legal trigger is reached,” he told CNBC.
Duarte said the U.K.’s exit from the EU “offers a useful warning. Ending free movement did not create a smooth transition to domestic labor self-sufficiency. It created shortages, recruitment frictions and higher costs in sectors that had relied on flexible EU workers.”
He added that the EU is Switzerland’s main trading partner, and free movement is tied to the broader bilateral framework that gives Swiss firms privileged access to European markets.
“If a ‘yes’ vote eventually forces Switzerland to terminate the free movement agreement, the strain would not be limited to migration policy. It could spill over into the entire Swiss-EU economic relationship,” Duarte said.
— CNBC’s Carolin Roth contributed to this report.

Washington — A key surveillance tool that lets the government collect foreign intelligence without a warrant is again at the brink of expiration. Barring an 11th-hour intervention, the spy authority, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is set to lapse at 12 a.m. Saturday after President Trump’s pick to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies complicated its renewal.
Democrats have opposed extending the authority since the president announced that he had selected Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to temporarily serve as director of national intelligence. In addition to his lack of national security experience, Democrats railed against Pulte for his efforts to go after some of Mr. Trump’s political foes on allegations of mortgage fraud.
Lawmakers have long sounded the alarm about the risks of letting Section 702 expire. Those who serve on congressional intelligence committees say that about 60% of the president’s daily intelligence briefing is derived from information collected under the law, and they consider it a tool that is critically important to national security.
But it’s still controversial: the provision already faced stiff opposition from civil liberties-minded lawmakers in both parties who have unsuccessfully pushed for years to implement a requirement for a warrant to search Americans’ data that’s incidentally swept up in the collection. Demands for reforms led Congress to punt the issue twice since its initial expiration in April.
Here’s what to know about what happens next.
What does Section 702 do?
Section 702 was first authorized in 2008 and allows the government to sweep up the electronic communications of foreigners abroad without a warrant.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has noted that policymakers across the federal government rely on the information it provides on a regular basis.
“It is a program that makes Americans more safe,” the South Dakota Republican said on the Senate floor Thursday. “The intelligence derived from the 702 program is something that has saved American lives — in theaters of conflict, preventing terrorist attacks, preventing drug runners from getting drugs into this country.”
Documents prepared by the intelligence community and sent to House Republicans earlier this year said “no other foreign intelligence authority can replicate Section 702’s speed, agility, and insights.”
“FISA Section 702 is often the primary or only source of intelligence in areas where access to other sources of collection would be extremely dangerous and/or costly,” the documents said. They were first reported by Politico, and the White House confirmed sending them.
While Congress reauthorizes the legal framework that allows for the collection of the communications, a secretive court known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizes the government to conduct the surveillance programs under certain parameters for up to a year.
After the court greenlights what categories of foreign intelligence information can be collected and determines the government is following appropriate targeting procedures, the government decides whom to target and gathers that data from U.S.-based electronic communications service providers, who are legally compelled to assist.
What happens if Section 702 expires?
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s recertification of the program through March provides cover after the law sunsets, according to some Democratic lawmakers and legal experts.
“Section 702 will not go dark,” said Elizabeth Goitein, the senior director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “That is a myth.”
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said the statute “makes it clear that the authorities of FISA are going to be positive and enforceable” until the recertification runs out next year.
“It will not lapse,” Durbin told reporters this week. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do this on a timely basis.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, argued that “government surveillance activities will continue unchanged” after Friday.
“Everything that’s already been authorized and certified is already in motion, and current FISA authorizations will continue unaffected, at least through March 17, 2027,” he said.
Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee who has opposed the extension due to his concerns over Pulte’s leadership, acknowledged Thursday that the expiration could be dangerous. But he noted, when asked about implications for major events like the World Cup, that it’s “not the only tool the intelligence community has.”
Communications providers may not cooperate with the government once Section 702 expires
Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said there are questions around whether communications providers would cooperate with the government’s requests after Friday, calling the scenario “a high-risk proposition.” Warner said a couple major companies threatened to stop participating in 2024 before Congress reached a deal to renew Section 702 for two years after a series of abuses by the FBI caused the program to nearly expire.
“I think they don’t mind participating as long as they get indemnification,” Warner said. “If the indemnification goes away — that’s why we’ve always tried to not get into this territory of having it expire.”
But others have pointed to the uncertainty surrounding a lapse, which has never occurred since Section 702 was authorized.
Republican Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, also cited the potential for service providers to refuse to comply with the government’s requests for data if the statute lapses.
The Brennan Center’s Goitein said the law makes clear that the program’s existing certifications and directives remain in force until their expiration date, regardless of whether Section 702 lapses. She said the legal effect of the grandfathering clause was tested in 2008 when the statute preceding Section 702 lapsed and the intelligence court ordered Yahoo to comply with a directive.
“After that lawsuit, Congress strengthened the grandfathering provision, meaning that the law is even clearer today,” she said.
702 database “will become increasingly out of date”
Crawford said Wednesday that a lapse in the spy power would be “uncharted territory.”
“Once this authorization expires, the clock starts ticking,” he said on the House floor. “The implications get worse every single day. While the 702 database would remain available to search, the data in that database will become increasingly out of date.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, warned Thursday after the House failed to pass a short-term extension that Democrats risked “a serious calamity on our shores.” Nineteen Republicans also voted against the extension.
Rep. Keith Self of Texas, who was one of those Republicans, called such rhetoric “scare tactics.”
“FISA isn’t going dark. We have the law. We have precedent from 2008,” he said.
Jake Laperruque, the deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Security and Surveillance Project, said it was notable that the House is heading home for a weeklong recess instead of staying in Washington to find a resolution.
“They would not be flying off to go home if they actually thought it was a real threat,” he said.
He added, “We feel really confident at this point that there is not going to be any change to operational activities when we hit [the] sunset period.”
The House is not due to return to Washington until June 23.

UPDATED with Paramount statement: The Department of Justice has approved Paramount’s pending $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros Discovery.
The signoff Friday by the Paramount-friendly Trump administration was confirmed to Deadline by multiple sources. No significant concessions by Paramount to the DOJ appear to have been made in order to gain the regulatory signoff, the sources indicated.
“We are grateful for the Department of Justice’s thorough review of this transaction, as well as the work of the other agencies that have completed their reviews and provided clearance to date,” a Paramount spokesperson in a statement provided to Deadline. “This deal is pro-competitive, resulting in a stronger company better positioned to compete against dominant technology platforms in an industry increasingly defined by intense competition for audiences, talent, technology, and investment. We remain focused on completing the transaction as soon as possible and delivering its benefits to consumers, creators, and the entertainment industry as a whole.”
The antitrust hurdle cleared by Paramount comes as state attorneys general in California, New York and almost a dozen other states are contemplating an antitrust suit to put the brakes on what would become a mega-studio.
Paramount CEO David Ellison and his management team have promised to close the WBD deal by September 30. If they fail to do so, they have pledged to pay shareholders a “ticking fee” of several million dollars a day. In recent days, regulators in the UK and Europe have signaled their plans to take a closer look at the transaction. Particularly with the shape of summers on the continent, if clarity is not reached by the start of August, the process will likely drag into September.
News leaking out of the approval comes the same day Paramount and the UFC (who have a $7.7 billion deal of their own) got a gift when a federal judge killed an eleventh-hour lawsuit to stop a UFC event at the White House on Sunday. The set of mixed-martial-arts matches, streaming live on Paramount+, will be contested on Donald Trump‘s 80th birthday.
Among opponents to the merger, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been in the forefront, and Friday she was quick to react to DOJ green light.
“This is terrible news for every American who doesn’t want Trump-aligned billionaires to control what they watch and how much they pay,” the New England senator said. “The Paramount-Warner Bros. deal has reeked of corruption and influence-peddling. This fight isn’t over. State AGs must block this merger.”
Out West, Golden State AG Rob Bonta’s office has long stuck to its line that the “Paramount acquisition of Warner Brothers remains an active investigation, and we do not have any updates to share at this time.” The CA DOJ did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment.
Overseas, the much debated deal is hitting some roadblocks with UK regulators.
Earlier this week, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority declared that it had opened a “merger inquiry” into the deal. With an August 7 deadline of sorts, the CMA intends to examine if the Paramount-WBD meld could present a “realistic prospect of a substantial lessening of competition.” If the Brits believe that such a prospect is real, then a second phase in their probe will kick off — a Phase 2 that could last up to five months and gummy up the works for the merger.
After a months-long death match with Netflix, a bid-raising Paramount succeeded in efforts to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in late February, with streamer co-CEO Ted Sarandos literally at the White House for meetings as news of the deal broke. Soon after, Team Ellison said it expected to close the deal in the third quarter, which would have been a remarkably quick turnaround of a deal this size.
That turnaround that looks to be well on track now, at least in America.
Additionally, even as Australia signed off just recently on the deal, more antitrust work is ongoing in the European Union, where a Phase 1 investigation is underway with a deadline of July 7. Experts have predicted a Phase 2 investigation is likely.
Separately, the European Commission is examining the deal under Foreign ⁠Subsidies Regulations and will decide by July 14 whether to ​clear it or open a full investigation. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Qatar Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi’s L’imad Holding are providing $24 billion in equity funding, joining the Ellisons, RedBird Capital and LionTree as investors. Paramount says the Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds will be purely passive investors.
Back in the U.S., where the Ellisons’ closeness to “good friend” Donald Trump has cast a shadow on the merits of the potentially disruptive merger, Democratic lawmakers have asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in his role as chair of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, to review potential national security risks of foreign ownership. One issue some have raised is a congressionally mandated 25% cap on foreign ownership of American broadcast stations.
The Justice Department’s approval was expected, which is why many opponents of the transaction had set sights on state attorneys general. Still, the DOJ’s decision to sign off on could have an impact on a state legal challenge, as judges may question why the transaction is problematic at the state level but not for federal authorities.
Democrats have charged that the DOJ has been politicized, including on antitrust matters. They have pointed to the Ellisons’ ties to the administration, and to corporate lobbying from officials close to the White House on another merger and antitrust lawsuit.
Politico was first to report on the DOJ approval of the Paramount-WBD merger.
Ted Johnson contributed to this report.

Police said 19 people, including a 16-year-old boy, had now been arrested after two nights of rioting in Northern Ireland following a knife attack earlier in the week.
The violence broke out after far-right activists called for demonstrations in response to the attack, which was captured in a graphic video.
Masked men burned vehicles and houses and blocked roads hours after Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson and other agitators encouraged people to take to the streets on Tuesday. On Wednesday, police used plastic bullets and water cannon after crowds attacked police with rocks and petrol bombs.
Concerns have been raised about messages encouraging disorder being spread online and forwarded over messaging apps. A committee of MPs on Friday warned that the government had failed to tackle the spread of misinformation online.
Chi Onwurah, the chair of the science, innovation and technology committee, said: “Unrest in Belfast shows that the government hasn’t done enough to tackle the scale and speed of the algorithmic amplification of misinformation online.”
In a letter to the technology secretary, Liz Kendall, Onwurah accused the government of ignoring the committee’s warning that social media algorithms had driven previous violent unrest in Southport by amplifying harmful and misleading content.
Onwurah said: “My committee warned in a report last year that the Online Safety Act was inadequate and riddled with regulatory gaps.”
The letter said: “The government and Ofcom should now force social media companies to take steps during crises to tackle the viral algorithmic amplification of not just illegal content, but also content that may help to drive unrest – such as by spreading false information about an incident – without meeting the bar for illegality.”
The Police Service for Northern Ireland (PSNI) said Thursday night was “much calmer” with only “lower-level disturbances” compared with the disorder of the previous two nights, and along with Police Scotland appealed for calm before anti-racist demonstrations planned in Belfast and Glasgow.
The PSNI assistant chief constable Ryan Henderson said: “Thankfully, the situation was much calmer than we have seen in recent days. Our policing operation will remain over the weekend to ensure public order is maintained.”
The victim of the knife attack, Stephen Ogilvie, who suffered deep cuts and lost an eye, remained in an induced coma on Friday but his condition was said to be improving. A Sudanese national, Hadi Alodid, 30, appeared in court on Wednesday charged with attempted murder over the attack.
A number of anti-racism events have been organised in response to this week’s unrest. A gathering billed as a community solidarity rally was due to take place in west Belfast on Friday evening, while a Together Against Hate demonstration is due to be held at Belfast City Hall on Saturday.
Police are also expecting large numbers to join a protest in Glasgow organised by Stand Up to Racism Scotland. The protest is in response to unrest in the city on Tuesday when five people including two police officers were injured, and Glasgow’s central mosque was forced to lock worshippers inside.
Police Scotland’s assistant chief constable Alan Waddell said there would be a large police presence at the demonstration. He said: “There must be no repeat of the disorder and violence seen in the city earlier this week, when members of our communities were targeted because of the colour of their skin and officers working to keep people safe were injured.
“My message is clear. Those attending must do so lawfully and the police will support public safety.”
The lawyer Aamer Anwar was among those supporting Saturday’s demonstration. He said: “Saturday is about reclaiming our streets, not a day for hate, but a celebration of our city and many cultures. Those who wish to cause the mayhem are not welcome.”

The best timekeepers today—atomic clocks—work off the quantum vibrations of an atom, specifically its electrons. But physicists have long dreamt of even better clocks that run on atomic nuclei, which are less sensitive to environmental disturbances. According to new research, that dream might soon become reality.
Last week, two independent teams based in Europe and China reported the first set of results from experiments using an atomic nuclei clock based on crystals of calcium fluoride containing thorium-229. Both papers, which have yet to be peer reviewed, are available as a preprint on arXiv. In the European experiment, researchers compared how well the clock fared against leading atomic clocks involved in the search for dark matter. The Chinese team, on the other hand, demonstrated the clock’s operation to compare its performance with atomic clocks.
“These results establish a solid-state platform for compact nuclear clocks, nuclear quantum sensing, and precision tests of fundamental physics,” the European team wrote in its paper.
Advanced timekeeping
According to a column by physicists Eric Hudson and Andrei Derevianko, ultraprecise clocks are “more than scientific curiosities,” as they are vital for smooth navigation, communications, and international timekeeping. Hudson and Derevianko, from the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Nevada, Reno, respectively, contributed to research from last December that demonstrated the potential of thorium-229 in atomic nucleus clocks.
In atomic clocks, scientists zap and excite the electrons in an atom to push the electrons from one energy level to another. That absorption “happens at an exquisitely precise frequency,” they explained, adding that these patterns are “set by the laws of physics” and give the world a fairly consistent standard for keeping time.
Meanwhile, a nucleus is 10,000 times smaller than an atom and less prone to disturbances from temperature, electric fields, and other environmental disturbances, the pair wrote—hence, physicists’ long-time interest in atomic nucleus clocks.
A concept comes to life
The challenge, then, was to find an atom that scientists could most effectively manipulate. For instance, it should be responsive to the laser that scientists use to trigger the “ticks,” so to speak, to tell time. In that sense, thorium-229 was an “exceptionally rare case” in which it has two different states, which scientists can induce using lasers to excite the nucleus from one state to another, explained Hudson and Derevianko.
The latest pair of papers build upon their work, among many others from the past couple decades. Importantly, the recent demonstrations implement a feedback loop that stabilizes the clock’s operations. This represents an improvement from the European team’s own work from 2024 and 2025.
“This was the final missing step before calling it an actual clock,” Lars von der Wense, a physicist at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany, told Science News. With forthcoming improvements to laser and crystal technology, nuclear clocks should advance rapidly, added von der Wense, who wasn’t involved in either work.
At the frontier of physics
Setting aside nuclear clocks’ practical benefits, researchers believe they could test the fundamental constraints of nature and new physics, according to Hudson and Derevianko. And indeed, that’s what the European team immediately set out to do with its latest iteration of a nuclear clock. The latter half of its paper describes how well the clock fared in evaluating constraints for ultralight dark matter—a hypothetical form of matter that could explain a whole bunch of cosmic mysteries.
To Science News, Thorsten Schumm, a physicist at TU Wien in Austria from the European team, reported that the nuclear clock already outperformed all atomic clocks in certain types of measurements. All that said, the technology is still at its first stages, he added. But it looks like nuclear clocks are off to a good start.