Council of States rejects counter-proposal to biodiversity initiative
Published: Thursday, Dec 7th 2023, 12:31
Back to Live Feed
The biodiversity initiative will be put to the vote without an indirect counter-proposal. On Thursday, the Council of States once again rejected a proposal drafted by the Federal Council and subsequently amended by the National Council.
The Council of States decided against the counter-proposal by 25 votes to 18 with one abstention because it did not want to rush through such a proposal, which was only available as a concept. The indirect counter-proposal to the biodiversity initiative is therefore off the table.
The initiative calls for more biodiversity areas and more public funding. In an initial draft of an indirect counter-proposal, the Federal Council proposed that biodiversity and protected areas should account for a total of 17% of Switzerland's land area, compared to 13.4% today.
The National Council removed this figure from the bill. And in order to build a bridge to the Council of States, it toned down the indirect counter-proposal - in vain. This would no longer have focused on biodiversity areas, but on the networking of ecological areas and improvements in biodiversity areas.
©Keystone/SDA
English 
German 
French 
Spanish 
Arabic