The Swiss people say yes to building the second motorway tunnel of mountain pass St. Gotthard, currently connecting Canton of Ticino with German Switzerland. The work was inaugurated in 1980 to foster exchanges between Italy and Central Europe, too. The new tunnel – to be built for safety reasons, above all – was approved through referendum with 57% consensus. Works are beginning on 2020. The tunnel should be working in 2027. Yesterday, over three million Swiss citizens went to the polls for 4 federal votes, while in the Italian-speaking Canton of Ticino they also voted about shops’ opening hours. On the other hand, the referendum initiative of PPD (Christian Democratic People’s Party of Switzerland) was rejected; it was named “For marriage and family, no to disadvantages for married couples”. The referendum was meant to cancel tax burden for families. On the other hand, the right-wing initiative on expelling foreign criminals, and the socialist one, called “Against speculation on food” were rejected. In particular, the referendum “For marriage and family, no to disadvantages for married couples” – rejected with just 50.8% majority – proposed to put an end to tax discrimination for married couples with respect to couples simply living together. National Councilman of PPD Marco Romano, a supporter of the referendum, is talking about a “half victory”. “We obtained a good majority as far as Cantons are concerned; unfortunately, that was not confirmed by the choice of the people. Now it is up to the Parliament to do something to remove discrimination already detected 32 years ago”.

As has been said several times during the electoral campaign, the result of the vote might be due to the fact that general attention was not on the tax nature of the proposal, but on debate on the very definition of marriage and “individual taxation”, which nevertheless was not questioned by the vote. With a view to the referendum, Msgr. Charles Morerod, bishop of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg, as well as President of the Conference of Swiss Bishops, stated: “The purpose of this initiative is in the title”, that is, “the fact of being married should not imply supplementary tax burden”, and “this purpose looks remarkable to us”. “Another question was taken into consideration, that is, definition of marriage. It is also the definition we use for our religious marriage, conceived as sacrament, and based on nature: the union of man and woman makes up the family”.