Swiss Abroad react to Swiss People’s Party pension-cut proposals

Swiss pensioners abroad have become a flashpoint in the People’s Party’s debate over state pension spending. With the 2027 federal elections approaching, the party has floated cutting or even abolishing pensions paid overseas, as well as excluding Swiss Abroad from the 13th monthly pension.

The proposals have drawn angry responses from Swiss pensioners in Thailand, Brazil and Portugal. At the end of August, a parliamentary proposal to exclude recipients abroad from the 13th payment set off protests. In September, the People’s Party added another idea: adjust overseas pensions to reflect local purchasing power. For some recipients, that could mean steep reductions.

The party raised the purchasing-power proposal in its response to the consultation on AHV 2030, the planned reform of Switzerland’s old age and survivors’ insurance. Reactions appeared in Swissinfo debates, on Blick’s website, on Facebook and through WhatsApp. The issue now puts the party’s pension-cost proposals in direct view of a group of voters whose benefits could be affected.

The purchasing-power proposal would connect overseas pension payments to the cost of living in the country where recipients reside. The People’s Party says it wants to adjust pensions paid abroad in countries with a low cost of living. Swissinfo reported that this could produce steep cuts for some recipients.

The proposal sits among a wider set of options for reducing the cost of state pensions and changing how they are funded. The party submitted it during the consultation on AHV 2030, the planned reform of the old age and survivors’ insurance system. The other proposal now drawing scrutiny concerns the 13th monthly pension, with a parliamentary proposal seeking to exclude recipients abroad.

For Swiss citizens who worked in Switzerland and paid into the system, the debate reaches beyond a calculation tied to local prices. Strupler said the party did not aim to take away what people earned through a lifetime of work in Switzerland. Schütz also argued that the purchasing-power idea could be implemented without penalising citizens abroad who had contributed for years.

Party leaders are trying to lower the temperature without withdrawing the ideas. President Marcel Dettling told Swissinfo that pension reform should consider the full range of options and stressed that the proposals do not all have equal priority. Asked whether the party risked alienating Swiss Abroad before the elections, he said the party made policy for Switzerland and that many citizens abroad supported its policies.

Campaign manager Manuel Strupler described the purchasing-power adjustment as one possibility among several, adding that it was not the proposal the party intended to focus on most. He said the party did not aim to take away benefits earned by people who had worked throughout their lives in Switzerland.

Those assurances narrow the emphasis, but leave the proposals on the table. Dettling’s remarks signal that the party leadership is stepping back from treating every option as a priority. Strupler’s comments, meanwhile, frame the purchasing-power plan as a potential way to address pension costs rather than a settled policy. For pensioners abroad, both proposals remain part of the public debate.

The proposals have reached Swiss Abroad voters as the People’s Party looks toward the 2027 federal elections. Inge Schütz, who leads the party’s international section for members living abroad, said its view was that the purchasing-power idea could be applied without penalising citizens who had contributed for years.

Schütz said the party’s main concern was people who immigrate temporarily, pay into the state pension system for only a few years, then leave and collect a Swiss pension abroad. She also said the international section had received no complaints about the proposals and no members had cancelled their membership over them. That sits alongside the anger expressed publicly by pensioners and commenters on social media and other platforms.

The party is therefore addressing two audiences at once: Swiss voters at home, for whom pension costs are part of the reform debate, and citizens abroad who fear losing payments they earned through contributions. As the election approaches, the leadership’s challenge will be to explain how its ideas would affect those groups while keeping the proposals within the broader AHV 2030 discussion.