Switzerland is set to vote on capping its population at 10 million in a bid from the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) to clamp down on “exploding” migration. The landlocked central European nation will hold a referendum in June on whether to write a population ceiling into its constitution in an attempt to clamp down on rising numbers of arrivals. Switzerland, which has a population of around 9.1 million, has recorded significantly faster population growth than its counterparts on the continent in recent decades, with a 70% rise from 1960 and a 25% rise since 2000.

The SVP, which has a majority in the Swiss parliament, has called for the government to impose a restriction on new arrivals when the population figure reaches 9.5 million, including refusing entry to asylum seekers. The proposals to be voted on this summer could also see the country withdraw from the European Union‘s (EU) free movement agreement if the figure exceeds 10 million for two years in a row, a move that could cause major friction within the bloc.

The EU is Switzerland’s biggest trading partner and receives around half of its imports – sparking warnings from business groups that the population cap risks injecting uncertainty into a stable economy.

Economiesuisse, the country’s leading business lobby group, dubbed the plan the “chaos initiative” and cautioned that restricting arrivals would aggravate the country’s labour shortage, as per the Financial Times.

The group’s chief economist Rudolf Minsch told the newspaper: “There have been some anti-immigration intiatives before but we have never seen such an extreme fixed-cap proposal.”

But the SVP has argued that Switzerland’s population “explosion” has put infrastructure and quality of life under strain, with around 27% of residents holding foreign nationality – one of the highest percentages on the continent.

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Recent polling by the research group LeeWas also found that almost half the country’s citizens were in favour of the measures, with 48% of more than 10,000 respondents responding positively.

It is set against a backdrop of growing migration scepticism in Europe, with a YouGov survey conducted in seven countries last year finding that a majority support stricter policies, including border closures and deportations.

While the backlash has centred around pressure on housing and public services, the pollster said the concerns voiced by respondents went “well beyond the economic terms” to touch on “deeper anxieties about identity, integration and national values”.