Opponents of Switzerland’s purchase of US F-35A fighter jets filed an initiative with authorities on Tuesday to organize a popular vote on the issue. The left-wing alliance Stop-F35 has deposited the signatures at the Federal Chancellery in Bern, which will now verify that there are indeed 100,000 valid signatures, as required by law, an AFP photographer noted. The Federal Council [le gouvernement suisse, ndlr] then you will have to fix the date of the vote.

“With this initiative, only the question of the type of aircraft is at issue. If Switzerland decides for another jet, the initiative will be withdrawn,” the alliance says on its website. The government decided at the end of June 2021 to acquire 36 F-35As from the US manufacturer Lockheed Martin. In September 2020, Switzerland narrowly approved, in a popular vote, an endowment of 6 billion francs (5.6 billion euros) to allow the air forces to acquire a new fleet.

US offer expires March 2023

While the Swiss government claims that the aircraft was by far the best, lowest priced of all the jets competing for the contract (Rafale, F/A-18 and Eurofighter), the myriad technical difficulties and budget overruns of the F-35 program in the United States prompted two parliamentary committees to launch an investigation into the choice of aircraft. However, the government announced in May that it wanted to speed up the purchase process as the US offer expires at the end of March 2023, suggesting that Bern does not intend to wait for the outcome of the popular vote. .

Seen from the start as an export product intended to ensure Washington’s dominance of the fighter jet market, the F-35 was the subject of a partnership with eight countries, including the United Kingdom, each receiving a share of work according to your investment. Planes destined for Switzerland would essentially be built in Italy. Recently, Greece and Germany have joined the list of countries that want to acquire the device, already bought by the United Kingdom, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands and Poland.