What happens when that goal of 10 million is reached? The government would have to withdraw from all “population-driving” international agreements, the referendum's initiators demand.

That means: leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, the Refugee Convention, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Most importantly, it would have to leave its free-movement agreement with the EU, which contributes greatly to the country's wealth (that, and... being a tax haven). The EU is the country's largest trading partner, accounting for 60% of its trade.

All this would not happen in some distant future: Switzerland already has a population of 9.1 million, and according to its statistics office, the 10 million mark could be reached as early as 2040.

You might think: “That's insane. No one would ever want this.” Sadly, wrong. It's actually quite close: according to the latest polls, 45% of Swiss people would vote yes, while 52% would vote no.

The proposal is reaching the ballot thanks to one of Switzerland's direct democracy tools: the popular initiative. If campaigners collect 100,000 signatures, it triggers a vote on constitutional change.

And the Swiss far right has been very good at using it.

Since the 1990s, the Swiss People's Party (SVP) has been the largest party in the national parliament, with around a third of the votes – it became dominant much earlier than its European counterparts.

The party has been extraordinarily successful at xenophobic initiatives. In 2009, Switzerland approved a ban on the construction of new minarets. In 2010, Swiss voters approved the automatic revocation of residence permits for convicted foreigners.

In 2014, Switzerland voted to reintroduce immigration quotas, which tested EU-Swiss relations. And in 2021, it successfully campaigned to ban burqas – even though there are no women wearing burqas and only around 30 wear niqab in Switzerland.

And now, they are campaigning for the big bang.

Since 2000, Switzerland's population has grown by 26%, compared to only 2% in Germany. The country has Europe's third-highest share of foreigners (behind Luxembourg and Liechtenstein), with just under a third of its population not holding Swiss citizenship.

But Switzerland's wealth also grew massively in the same period. GDP per capita increased by a fifth, median income by a fourth, and median wealth by one and a half. It's mostly the agreements with the rest of Europe and foreigners' work that helped boost the Swiss economy and culture.

To push for the cap, the SVP used a particularly nasty strategy. They labelled it a “sustainability initiative”, linking ecological concerns about density stress with nationalist policy.

Regardless of whether this initiative passes in Switzerland, the European far right has gained a new way to mobilise.

It's not too difficult to imagine Alternative for Germany or France's National Rally demanding similar population caps. At the end of May, representatives of the far right met in Portugal for a “remigration summit”, where they openly discussed how to remigrate big parts of Europe's population because they aren't European enough.

Meanwhile, water scarcity, extreme weather, and sea-level rise due to the climate crisis will inevitably cause more migration to Europe in the future – something no population cap can prevent.

Whether that will actually become Europe's policy is open. But if the debate around this initiative and migration around the continent is anything to go by, we are headed for a dark, nativist future.