Swiss voters look set to vote on whether to change the constitution to preserve the cash version of their currency after a group focused on defending Switzerland’s notes and coins announced it had collected 157,000 signatures, a figure exceeding the 100,000 required to launch a referendum, reported RTS.
Of the 157,422 signatures the Swiss Liberty Movement, the group behind the vote, claims to have collected, 111,197 have already been validated, it said.
The initiative is aimed at ensuring cashless payment and digitisation are not used to eliminate cash, which the group describes as critical to liberty in Switzerland. It would like to see the preservation of sufficient cash and its acceptance as a means of payment enshrined in the constitution, requiring any future decision to eliminate it be put to voters.
The group behind the initiative entered Swiss politics during the pandemic and launched an initiative against compulsory vaccination in 2021. In same way that no plan was announced to make Covid-19 vaccination compulsory, no plan has been announced to eliminate cash. The Swiss National Bank (SNB), the institution charged with the issuance of Switzerland’s notes and coins, has not issued any plans to eliminate physical money.
Swiss Liberty Movement claims to have the support of the Federal Democratic Union (UDF/EDU) and Swiss Democrats (DS/SD), two very small political parties.
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