The committee behind the Compass Initiative submitted the signatures it had collected to the Federal Chancellery on Friday. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox The petition for a referendum wants to make the new treaties with the EU subject to a majority of the cantons. The exact date of the vote is likely to be a topic of discussion. The initiators announced that more than 115,000 of the 140,000 signatures submitted had been authenticated. They reiterated their demand that the petition for a referendum should be put to the vote before a decision is made on the treaties with Brussels. The government is proposing that the treaty package should only be subject to an optional referendum. This would mean that a majority of the people would be required for ratification, but not a majority of the cantons. The Federal Constitution does not provide for a mandatory referendum in such cases, it argues. + The Swiss-EU bilateral treaty updates, explained The authors of ...
