Swiss Communists denounce plan to use VAT to fund increased military spending

Swiss tank crew participates in exercises in Germany with US and other forces, February, 2025 -- public domain image

The Communist Party (Switzerland) strongly opposes the decision to increase the security and military budget to 31 billion francs by raising value added tax (VAT) by 0.8 percentage points. VAT is an unfair and antisocial tax, which everyone—from workers to billionaires—pays equally and which should simply be abolished: increasing it to finance the arms race—just as NATO and the EU are ordering us to do—is simply unacceptable!

If, until now, the worst Federal Council ever had sacrificed the welfare state and public services in order to replenish the coffers of an already oversized army that is no longer conceived as a defense force, to the point of provocatively suggesting sending our soldiers to Ukraine (!), it is now directly attacking the purchasing power of citizens, already severely tested by rising prices for goods and services, in order to finance rearmament and the integration of the Swiss army into NATO.

Everything related to military spending lately has been characterized by carelessness and constant increases: from the purchase of F-35As with US technological restrictions (so much for national sovereignty!) to (Israeli) drones that don't work in cold weather. And Swiss workers are now supposed to be taxed even more to finance these incompetents?

The Swiss Federal Council justifies this decision with the “deterioration of the geopolitical situation,” as if this situation were not caused by the very same arms race we have been witnessing since 2022, NATO expansionism, and Israel's impunity: a rearmament that the Confederation is mechanically replicating in the wake of the EU's warmongering, which never misses an opportunity to stir up hatred against emerging nations, from Russia to Iran and perhaps even China in the future.

If our government really cares about the delicate international situation, it should stop giving in to every madness of the Euro-Atlantic bloc and return to true neutrality, restoring to our diplomacy the credibility it has lost by adopting unilateral sanctions and voting to re-export Swiss weapons to countries at war. Neutrality does not only mean not joining the warmongering alliance that surrounds us, but also pursuing a line of foreign and military policy that is truly independent of those of Brussels!