A man casts his voting ballot at the polling station in the Spitalacker school in Bern November 29, 2014
Swiss voters looked set on Sunday to clearly reject proposals that would have forced the central bank to buy up massive amounts of gold and imposed strict limits on immigration, threatening close economic ties to the European Union.
Switzerland's system of direct democracy gives citizens the right to force popular votes if they can gather enough signatures of support. The measures proposed on Sunday reflect a growing sense that traditional Swiss values are under threat.
The "Save our Swiss gold" initiative, proposed by the right-wing Swiss People's Party out of concern that the central bank has sold too much of its gold in the past, looked set to be rejected by 78 percent of voters, according to an initial projection of the voting trend from Swiss broadcaster SRF.
"The issue's off the table," Claude Longchamp of the gfs.bern research and polling institute told SRF television.
The measure would have compelled the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to boost its gold reserves to 20 percent from around 8 percent currently, complicating policy at a time when the central bank is trying to defend a 1.20 euro cap on the Swiss franc imposed at the height of the euro crisis.
Seventy-four percent of voters were set to reject a separate initiative that aimed to cut annual immigration by three-quarters from current levels in order to reduce the strain on Switzerland's pristine natural environment, the SRF projection showed.
The would have endangered the Swiss government's attempts to salvage a raft of treaties with the EU, its biggest trading partner, that are conditional on Switzerland's commitment to the free movement of labour.
A third referendum aimed at scrapping a tax perk for wealthy foreigners was also set to be defeated.
