Switzerland

Switzerland has no residence permit for a person living on an income from abroad. The Foreign Nationals Act divides admission into two sections: one for a stay with gainful activity, articles 18 to 26a, and one for a stay without it, articles 27 to 29a. That second section has four members and no more - education and further training, pensioners, medical treatment, and job seeking, the last of which is only a rule about social assistance. Nothing in it admits a person who simply has money coming in. The nearest thing is the pensioner route, which needs age 55, prior personal ties to Switzerland and an absolute bar on gainful activity anywhere in the world. A national of a Union or EFTA state is in a different position entirely: Annex I article 24 of the free movement agreement gives them a permit of at least five years on sufficient means and sickness insurance, with no age, no prior ties and no quota.

Admission to study is in article 27 of the Foreign Nationals Act and it has four conditions: the school confirms the course can be started, suitable accommodation is available, the necessary funds are there, and the applicant meets the personal and educational conditions for the course. The ordinance says what the last of those actually tests - the authority is looking for signs that the course is a way round the admission rules rather than an education, and absence of such signs is what satisfies the condition. Funds can be shown by an undertaking from a solvent person resident in Switzerland, by a Swiss bank's confirmation of the applicant's assets, or by a binding promise of scholarships or study loans. Courses are normally authorised for at most eight years. And the Act closes the door at the end rather than leaving it ajar: what happens after the course finishes or is broken off is governed by the ordinary admission conditions, with no graduate route written into the article.

Swiss family reunification is graded by what the sponsor holds, and the grading is the whole of the rule. The foreign spouse of a Swiss national has an entitlement to a residence permit and to its renewal, on one condition: living together. The foreign spouse of a holder of a settlement permit also has an entitlement, but with five conditions - living together, appropriate housing, no reliance on social assistance, being able to communicate in the national language spoken at the place of residence, and the sponsor not drawing supplementary benefits. The spouse of a holder of an ordinary residence permit has no entitlement at all: the same five conditions appear, and the verb changes from "have a claim" to "may be granted". After five years of lawful and uninterrupted residence a spouse in the first two groups is entitled to the settlement permit if the integration criteria are met, and children under twelve are entitled to it outright.

Switzerland is in neither the European Union nor the European Economic Area, and a citizen of a member state still moves there as of right. The right comes from one bilateral instrument, the Agreement of 21 June 1999 on the free movement of persons (SR 0.142.112.681), and it is written as a treaty between two parties rather than as a chapter of Union law. The Agreement gives entry on a valid identity card or passport with no entry visa, a residence permit of at least five years to an employee with a contract of a year or more, no permit at all for work of three months or less, up to six months to look for work, and a permit of at least five years to a person who works at all, provided they have means enough not to need social assistance and sickness insurance covering every risk. The Foreign Nationals Act then stands back: by its own article 2 paragraph 2 the Act applies to a Union national only so far as the Agreement has no diverging provision or the Act is the more favourable of the two.

Switzerland is in neither the European Union nor the European Economic Area, and a visitor still meets the Union's visa list at its border. The route is association, not membership: the Foreign Nationals Act says its entry and visa provisions apply only so far as the Schengen Association Agreements do not provide otherwise, and the ordinance made under it, the VEV, then writes the Union instruments into Swiss law by name. Entry conditions for a short stay are those of article 6 of the Schengen Borders Code; a national of a state in Annex I to Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 needs a visa and a national of a state in Annex II does not. What Switzerland adds is its own: an Annex II national who comes to work needs a visa from the first day or after eight days in a calendar year, depending on which Swiss annex their state is in and what the work is - a rule no member state applies, because no member state has it.

Switzerland admits a worker from outside the EU and EFTA under four conditions at once, and all four are in the Foreign Nationals Act. The job has to be in the overall economic interest; the employer has to apply, because the worker cannot; no suitable candidate can be found among residents or nationals of a state Switzerland has a free-movement agreement with; and the person has to be an executive, a specialist or otherwise qualified. Two more follow: pay and conditions must be those customary for the place, the occupation and the sector, and the person must have a flat appropriate to their needs. Then there is the quota. The Federal Council may cap first-time short-stay and residence permits for work and set separate ceilings for the Confederation and the cantons, and it does: the ordinance fixes 4,000 short-stay permits and 4,500 residence permits for the calendar year 2026, split canton by canton in a table that gives Zurich 399 of the short-stay ones and Appenzell Innerrhoden three.

Switzerland has a retirement route and it is narrow by design. Article 28 of the Foreign Nationals Act admits a person who is no longer in work on three conditions: a minimum age the Federal Council sets, special personal ties to Switzerland, and the necessary financial means. The ordinance fills in all three. The age is 55. The ties are shown by earlier extended stays - holidays, study or work count - or by close relationships with close relatives in Switzerland, meaning parents, children, grandchildren or siblings. The means have to exceed the amount that would entitle a Swiss national in the same situation to supplementary benefits. And the condition that catches people out is the fourth paragraph of the article: no gainful activity at all, in Switzerland or abroad, apart from managing your own assets.

Swiss citizenship is acquired at three levels at once and the federal government is not the one that grants it. The Confederation issues an authorisation: the applicant must hold a settlement permit, have lived in Switzerland for ten years in all with three of them in the last five, be successfully integrated, be familiar with Swiss ways of life, and pose no threat to internal or external security. Years lived between the ages of eight and eighteen count double, but the real stay must still be at least six. The canton then decides within a year, and the cantonal decision is what actually confers the citizenship - of the commune, of the canton and of Switzerland, all at the moment it becomes final. Cantonal law sets a further residence requirement of between two and five years, may add integration criteria of its own, and may put the application to the electorate at a communal assembly. The language standard is federal and specific: B1 spoken and A2 written, in a national language.

Swiss federal income tax attaches on personal affiliation, and the Act gives it two separate gates. The first is domicile for tax purposes: being in Switzerland with the intention of staying permanently. The second is tax presence, and it is unusually short - thirty days if you carry on gainful activity, ninety days if you do not, counted regardless of temporary interruptions. There is no 183-day rule here. The Act also writes in its own exception: a person domiciled abroad who is in Switzerland only to attend an educational institution or to be cared for in a health establishment creates neither domicile nor presence. And article 14 offers the alternative Switzerland is known for - taxation on expenditure, open only to a person without Swiss citizenship who becomes unlimitedly liable for the first time or after a ten-year gap and does no gainful work in Switzerland, with a federal floor of 435,000 francs.

Switzerland has no national health service and no payroll health contribution. Everyone resident in Switzerland must insure themselves for medical care within three months of taking up residence, choosing freely among the licensed insurers. The premium is set by each insurer rather than by the state, graded by cantonal cost differences and based on where the insured person lives, and it is not related to income: a child pays less than a young adult and a young adult less than everyone else, and that is the whole of the differentiation the Act requires. On top of the premium comes cost sharing - a fixed annual deductible of 300 francs and then 10 per cent of everything above it, capped at 700 francs a year for an adult and 350 for a child. The cantons enforce the duty: if you do not insure yourself in time, the authority the canton designates assigns you an insurer.

A driver arriving in Switzerland may use a valid national foreign licence, and needs a Swiss one once they have lived in Switzerland for twelve months without a continuous absence abroad of more than three months. The exchange is not a formality in the ordinance's own words: article 44 says the Swiss licence is issued to the holder of a valid foreign national licence when they show on a control drive that they know the traffic rules and can drive safely, the control drive may not be repeated, and failing it means the foreign licence is withdrawn as well. The way out is article 150(5)(e), which lets the Federal Roads Office waive the control drive and the theory test for drivers from states whose training and testing requirements match Switzerland's - and the list of those states is an administrative document, not part of the ordinance. The rule and the exemption therefore live in two different places, and only one of them is published as law.

Switzerland is outside the European Union's customs territory, so moving household goods there is a customs matter in a way that moving between two member states is not. The customs ordinance makes the relief short and specific: removal goods of a person taking up residence are free of duty. To count as removal goods, the things have to have been used abroad by that person for at least six months, for private life or for a trade or profession, and be intended for their continued own use in Switzerland. They must be brought in in temporal connection with the change of residence, and anything to follow later has to be declared at the first import. Household stores, tobacco goods and drink come in alongside in customary kind and quantity, with 200 litres of drink up to 25 per cent alcohol and 12 litres above it. Someone marrying a person resident in Switzerland gets a wider relief under the next article, and it is the one that covers a vehicle outright.

Switzerland has no residence permit for people of Swiss descent. Descent operates on citizenship instead, and it operates at birth: the child of married parents one of whom is Swiss is Swiss from birth, as is the child of a Swiss mother not married to the father. One generation, no grandparent rule, and no application. What there is instead is a trap for the generation born abroad. A child born abroad to a Swiss parent who also holds another nationality forfeits Swiss citizenship on completing their 25th year unless, before then, they have been reported to a Swiss authority at home or abroad, reported themselves, or declared in writing that they wish to keep it - and if they forfeit it, so do their children. Someone who has lost Swiss citizenship may apply for reinstatement within ten years, or after that if they have had three years of residence in Switzerland. For a foreign child of a Swiss national who cannot use the family reunification articles, the admission ordinance offers a residence permit - but only where reinstatement or facilitated naturalisation is a possibility.

Switzerland has no investor residence programme and names no sum. What it has is one line in article 23 of the Foreign Nationals Act. Paragraph 1 says short-stay and residence permits for work may be granted only to executives, specialists and other qualified workers; paragraph 3 then lists five kinds of people who may be admitted in derogation from that, and the first of them is "investors and entrepreneurs who preserve or create jobs". Everything else still applies: the admission must serve the overall economic interest, the pay and conditions must be customary, there must be appropriate housing, and the permit comes out of the canton's or the Confederation's annual quota. The implementing ordinance adds nothing - it contains no article implementing article 23(3) and no investment threshold anywhere. The test is jobs preserved or created, assessed by a canton, and no amount of money satisfies it on its own.

Swiss law gives nobody a right to be a customer of a bank. What it gives is a universal service obligation, and it sits in the Postal Act rather than in banking law: the Post must ensure a nationwide basic supply of payment services, accessible in an appropriate way to all population groups in all regions. The ordinance says what that contains, and the first item on the list is opening and running a payment account, in Swiss francs, for natural and legal persons with residence, seat or establishment in Switzerland. The obligation is discharged by PostFinance. It is not unconditional - PostFinance may exclude a customer where financial market, money laundering or embargo legislation conflicts with providing the service or compliance would cost the Post disproportionately, or where serious legal or reputational damage threatens - and it does not cover cross-border transfers at all. Every provider, Post or bank, must first identify the contracting party from a conclusive document under the Money Laundering Act.