On 24 April 2026, the Swiss Confederation and the cantons released the interim report of the “Disentanglement 27” project. Estimated volume: CHF 4 billion of tasks to be transferred upwards to the Confederation, CHF 4.8 billion downwards to the cantons. Stated principle: strict budget neutrality. Public consultation runs until early July, with the final report expected by the end of 2027.
On 26 April 2026, just forty-eight hours later, the citizens of the canton of Fribourg rejected — by 68.57% — the law on the consolidation of cantonal finances (LAFE), which provided for several transfers of liabilities from the canton to its municipalities.
Forty-eight hours. On one side, a national project meticulously reviewing the allocation of tasks between two tiers of the State across 21 task groups. On the other, a popular referendum penalising precisely a shift towards the third tier — the very tier that Disentanglement 27 has carefully kept outside its scope.
The first instalment of this diptych, published last week, defended a limited thesis: French-speaking Switzerland and the canton of Fribourg would benefit from establishing a robust municipal debt brake, calibrated on the German-Swiss models. The diagnosis is correct, but incomplete. Adding a municipal brake will not be enough. Because the question that remains, after the coincidence of 24 and 26 April, runs deeper. Has the Swiss debt brake truly functioned as fiscal discipline? Or is it also, in part, a silent mechanism for the cascading downward shift of liabilities? And if so, how can it be reformed without breaking what works?
That is what this second instalment sets out to examine.
 

The federal success: only part of the story

 
The numbers on the federal debt brake are well known. Federal debt reduced by CHF 27 billion between 2003 and 2019. Federal debt-to-GDP ratio at 13.5% in 2019, 16.1% at the end of 2025 even after the pandemic. According to Avenir Suisse, without the brake, roughly CHF 275 billion of additional debt would have accumulated since 2003. All of that is accurate.
But these figures describe a single tier. What happened during that same period on the two tiers below?
At the cantonal level, median indebtedness remained stable at around 15% of cantonal GDP between 2010 and 2020. Reassuring, on the surface. But let us look more closely at the aggregate liabilities. In Fribourg — a canton consistently ranked among the best-managed in Switzerland; Avenir Suisse noted in March 2026 that Fribourg is one of only four cantons (alongside Neuchâtel, Valais and Zug) to have budgeted a balanced or surplus result for 2025 — cantonal state expenditures doubled between 2003 and 2023, while the liabilities of Fribourg’s municipalities rose by 66% over the same period. The neighbouring canton of Vaud presents the sharpest contrast: over ten years, cantonal debt down by 35%, municipal debt up by 27%.
These two trajectories do not offset each other. They add up. The sum of cantonal and municipal debt in several French-speaking cantons increased over the very period during which federal debt was falling. This is not arithmetic coincidence. It is what happens when each tier, taken individually, is held to a discipline, but no one is holding the flows between tiers.
The Conference of Cantonal Governments (CCG) itself made this clear in September 2024, through its president Markus Dieth: “Direct shifts of liabilities, which leave cantons no room for manoeuvre, are by no means savings measures and are firmly rejected by the cantonal governments.” Florence Nater, Vice-President, reinforced the message in June 2025: “A consolidation of federal finances may receive the support of the cantons, but it cannot take place at their expense through unilateral shifts of liabilities. Taxpayers would gain nothing from such an exchange.”
When the institutional body representing the 26 cantonal governments officially and publicly denounces shifts of liabilities as a false budgetary gain, this is no longer a suspicion. It is an observation shared at the highest level of Switzerland’s institutional hierarchy. Swiss fiscal discipline is a success in the sense that each tier, measured individually, has held its aggregates. It is a partial success in the sense that the sum of individual disciplines has not produced a system-wide discipline.
This is what I call the systemic optical effect. Debt falls at the tier observed, because part of the liabilities slide down to the tier below. Seen from the Confederation, the federal brake is a success. Seen from below, that success is accompanied by a downward shift.
 

The cascade in three stages

 
The mechanism became legible in June 2025, when the CCG explicitly wrote, for the first time, that the federal Relief Programme 2027 would entail “considerable shifts of liabilities towards the cantons and the municipalities.” The full cascade is now named by the institution best placed to do so.
Let us examine it concretely in Fribourg.
First shift: Confederation to cantons. The Confederation aims for CHF 3 billion in savings from 2027 onwards under its Relief Programme. A significant share of those savings comes from reducing transfers to the cantons in jointly funded areas — health insurance premium reductions, supplementary benefits, education, regional transport. The cantons, contractually bound in these tasks, absorb the impact.
Second shift: cantons to municipalities. To absorb the reduction in federal transfers, cantons under balanced-budget constraints (now nearly all of them) themselves seek to pass part of the burden down to municipalities. The Fribourg LAFE provided, among its 18 measures, several adjustments to the allocation of liabilities between the canton and its municipalities. A modest volume on paper — around CHF 10 million cumulatively over three years, according to the Council of State’s figures. But this modest volume sits within a broader consolidation programme (PAFE) targeting CHF 405 million in budgetary improvements over 2026-2028.
Third shift: municipalities to taxpayers and public services. Municipalities, caught between rigid own revenues (essentially the local tax, capped by intermunicipal and cantonal competition) and rising liabilities, are left with three levers: raise local tax coefficients, cut services, or borrow more. In Ursy, where I sit on the municipal assembly, the 2025 accounts document the third option with stark clarity: net debt ratio at 331%, self-financing rate at 1%. The margin is shrinking visibly.
On 26 April, the Fribourg electorate stopped the second shift. But the first — the federal Relief Programme 2027 — is still in motion at federal level. The canton will have to absorb it without the LAFE cushion. The pressure on municipalities does not disappear with the rejection; it redeploys into the “amended” 2026 budget that the Council of State must submit to the Grand Council at its June session, for entry into force on 1 July.
The cascade did not stop on 26 April. It was simply slowed by one notch at one specific point. The systemic diagnosis remains intact.
 

RPT 2008: what was attempted, what fell short

 
To understand why the cascade exists, we need to return to the great reform of 2008: the RPT (Réforme de la péréquation financière et de la répartition des tâches entre la Confédération et les cantons — the New Financial Equalisation between the Confederation and the cantons). Approved by 64% in the popular vote of November 2004, it entered into force on 1 January 2008. The first fundamental reorganisation of Switzerland’s institutional relations since 1848.
The stated objective was twofold. To reorganise financial equalisation — that is, the compensation flows between richer and poorer cantons. And to disentangle tasks — that is, to assign each mission to the most relevant tier, without opaque co-financing.
On the first count, success. Today’s equalisation system redistributes CHF 6.4 billion in 2026, two thirds of it via the Confederation, and disparities between high and low resource potential cantons have markedly diminished. This mechanism, despite criticism of its disempowering effect on recipient cantons, works.
On the second count, partial failure. As Avenir Suisse documented in its study RPT 2 — For a revitalisation of Swiss federalism (2017, updated 2021): “Under the RPT, only 40% of joint competences were disentangled, while the Confederation and the cantons continue to share responsibility for 17 tasks.” Of the 53 tasks jointly funded before 2008, only 21 were properly disaggregated and clearly reallocated. The rest — the majority — remained in co-financing.
Bernard Dafflon, Professor Emeritus of Public Finance at the University of Fribourg, had set out the diagnosis as early as 2010, in his University of Fribourg working paper Local debt: from budget responsibility to fiscal discipline. His thesis was clear: fiscal discipline at one tier only makes sense if the allocation of tasks between tiers is clear and stable. When it is not, discipline produces displacement rather than savings. Fifteen years later, this is precisely what the Swiss trajectory of 2008-2025 documents.
The RPT disciplined the financial flows (equalisation), but it left unfinished the discipline of task flows (disentanglement). The result, two decades later, is exactly what we observe: a system in which each tier is held in check, but in which tasks slide between tiers without overall governance.
In the same study, Avenir Suisse proposed a way out: an automatic mechanism for the transfer of fiscal sovereignty, enshrined in the Federal Constitution. The principle: every transfer of a task from one tier to another is accompanied, simultaneously and proportionately, by the transfer of the corresponding fiscal competence. No more ad hoc political debates with each adjustment. A rule, automatic, that makes budget neutrality enforceable and operational. The volume envisaged for the cantons was around CHF 10 billion.
This proposal, formulated by a liberal think tank, was not taken up by the Disentanglement 27 project. A gap that the next phase of the project should correct.
 

Disentanglement 27: a two-tier project, with consultation across three

 
The Disentanglement 27 project, launched in June 2024 by the Federal Council and the Conference of Cantonal Governments, is the logical sequel to the RPT. Its ambition is explicit: take up the tasks the RPT 2008 could not disentangle, and examine 21 task groups without taboo.
The interim report published on 24 April 2026 delivers an initial verdict. Of the 21 groups examined, 14 show disentanglement potential. A consensus has emerged on roughly half of those 14 areas (supplementary benefits, rail infrastructure, military administration, tertiary education subsidies). For the other half, variants remain under discussion (regional transport, road financing, vocational training, building culture).
This is a serious, ambitious, sustained, and politically legitimate project. It deserves credit.
But it has a blind spot. The project examines the allocation between two tiers: Confederation and cantons. Not three. The consultation running until early July 2026 is open to “cantons, cities and municipalities” — a cosmetic formulation: municipalities are heard, but the project’s scope does not include them as a tier of allocation. They can comment; they cannot negotiate.
It is the same mechanism as in Germany, where the constitutional debt brake of 2009 covers only the Federation and the Länder, explicitly excluding the municipalities (Article 109 of the Basic Law). The German outcome was set out in the first instalment: cumulative municipal deficit of EUR 31.9 billion in 2025, the worst since reunification. Eleven thousand municipalities and 295 districts (Landkreise) are left outside the federal device, and it is precisely where they are forgotten that debt accumulates silently.
Switzerland has a chance Germany did not have: its disentanglement project is not constitutionally closed; it is in progress. The final report is not expected before the end of 2027. There are two years to broaden the scope, or to prepare a complementary project.
That is why I propose here, without polemics but with clarity, that the next project be named now: Disentanglement 28. A twin project, calibrated on the same methodology, the same principle of budget neutrality, the same final-report horizon, but bearing on the canton-municipality pair. Without D28, D27 will succeed in clarifying flows between the two upper tiers and will leave intact — or even worsen — the opacity of the third.
This is not one more project. It is the other half of the same project.
 

Four principles for an integrated overhaul

 
If the cascade is the problem, integrated architecture is the answer. Four principles can guide an overhaul that does not destroy what works, but completes what is missing.
Principle 1: strict budget neutrality with an automatic mechanism for the transfer of fiscal sovereignty. This is the Avenir Suisse RPT 2 proposal, transposed to three tiers. Concretely: if the Confederation transfers a task valued at CHF 500 million to the cantons, the constitutional mechanism automatically transfers a corresponding fraction of direct federal tax or VAT — calibrated according to a fixed legal formula — to cantonal fiscal sovereignty. No political debate on cost evaluation. No parliamentary haggling at each revision. The rule applies. The same between cantons and municipalities: every task transfer is accompanied by a proportionate transfer of the municipal share of cantonal tax. This is the only way to make budget neutrality something more than a slogan repeated in the press releases of the CCG.
Principle 2: symmetrical brake architecture at every tier. If the Confederation has a brake, and if nearly all cantons have a brake, then every municipality must have one — calibrated to its size. A municipality of 200 inhabitants does not have the same budgetary structure as a city of 30,000 — the calibration differs, the principle does not. The models exist and were detailed in the first instalment: Lucerne with its law on municipal finance (FHGG), stacking four binding indicators; Solothurn with its Watchlist, graduated across four phases of progressive supervision; Zurich with its hybrid architecture, allowing the most exposed municipalities to impose their own rules. Three architectures, three balances between cantonal rigour and local autonomy. The supervisory layer itself follows the institutional architecture of each canton: the district prefect (Oberamtmann in the canton of Fribourg, Regierungsstatthalter in the canton of Bern) — already competent on municipal budgets, who would simply need to be properly equipped — a court of audit elsewhere, direct cantonal authority in cantons without an intermediate level. The principle does not depend on the layer; the layer depends on each canton’s institutional history. Symmetry is not an aesthetic luxury: it is what makes the cascade visible and negotiable rather than invisible and endured.
Principle 3: democratic legibility restored. Swiss citizens accepted the federal brake by 84.7% in 2001 because they understood its purpose. They rejected the LAFE by 68.57% in April 2026 because they perceived an opaque transfer mechanism. Between the two, what has degraded is legibility. An integrated overhaul must restore the traceability of transfers: who decides, who pays, who executes, who is accountable. This is exactly the diagnosis that Bernard Dafflon set out as early as 2010: fiscal discipline presupposes fiscal responsibility, which itself presupposes clarity of competences. Without clarity, no responsibility; without responsibility, no real discipline.
Principle 4: horizontal oversight of transfers. What is most lacking today is a body or instrument that measures and publishes, in real time, the net flows between tiers. The CCG does so through communiqués, on a punctual and political basis. The Confederation does so for equalisation, but not for implicit transfers. An independent observatory — or an extended mandate to the Federal Finance Administration — that would produce an annual public report on the flows between Confederation, cantons and municipalities would be the basic instrument of a three-tier budgetary democracy. What the Solothurn Watchlist does at cantonal level, an analogous device could do at national level.
These four principles are not revolutionary. They already exist, in part, in the models cited. What is missing is their coherent integration. And the political opportunity to push it forward.
One objection deserves to be addressed head-on. The economic right, legitimately attentive to the principle of subsidiarity, might see in this proposal “more state, more complexity.” The opposite is true. An integrated architecture reduces entanglement, because it clarifies who does what and who pays for what. The current complexity does not come from integration; it comes precisely from its absence. It is opaque co-financing, unilateral transfers and ad hoc adjustments that consume political energy. A stable, automatic, transparent constitutional rule consumes less state than a patchwork negotiated case by case.
 

The historical moment

 
The opportunity is now. Three elements compose it.
First element: Disentanglement 27 is open, in consultation until July 2026, with a final report due at the end of 2027. There are two years to broaden the scope, or to prepare the twin D28 project. This is precisely the window the RPT had between 2001 and 2008. That window will not reopen any time soon.
Second element: the LAFE rejection of 26 April has politically raised the value of a clear debate on transfers. The Fribourg electorate did not refuse rigour. It refused a rigour perceived as late, opaque and displaced. An integrated overhaul, transparent, negotiated in cool conditions rather than in haste, has a chance of winning support that another cantonal austerity plan would not. The political timing is rare.
Third element: Switzerland is negotiating this issue from a position of strength. Federal public debt at 16.1% of GDP. Four cantons (FR, NE, VS, ZG) at balance or surplus for 2025. Equalisation at 0.8% of national GDP. There is no financial emergency forcing the debate to be hurried.
The counter-example is France. According to INSEE data and analyses by the Cour des comptes for 2025, French public debt reached 115.6% of GDP in the second quarter, totalling EUR 3,416 billion. The 2024 deficit stood at 6.0% of GDP, and the trajectory for returning below the 3% threshold has already been postponed twice — from 2027 to 2029. The Cour des comptes now estimates the necessary structural adjustment at EUR 110 billion, twice the 2023 estimate.
In this context, French local authorities are forced to contribute to the budgetary effort under emergency conditions, without any institutional debate of substance on the allocation of competences. The municipal block endures Parisian arbitrations; it does not negotiate them. This is precisely the situation Switzerland can avoid by acting now. Anticipate rather than react. Overhaul in cool conditions rather than patch in haste. The Swiss art of substantive reform has always been this: to take ten years to build an RPT that holds for sixty. Disentanglement 27, complemented by a D28 covering municipalities, is exactly that kind of undertaking.
 

The work that remains

 
I have lived this discussion in fragments. In St Gallen, where I studied business administration at the HSG, I saw how Swiss-German fiscal prudence transmitted itself through culture as much as through law. In Olten, in Zurich, I heard municipal votes on Voranschläge settled in neighbourhood assemblies as if they were democratic self-evidences. In Forel-Lavaux, then in Montet (Glâne) before the merger with Ursy, I saw how those mechanisms thinned out in French-speaking Switzerland, for lack of tools. Today in Ursy, I see the figures that result. Thirty years working in two languages, ten years in the canton of St Gallen, ten years in the canton of Zurich, and now Fribourg: the Röstigraben — Switzerland’s symbolic linguistic divide — is not a Röstigraben of cultures. It is a Röstigraben of tools.
And tools can be built.
 

Conclusion

 
On 24 April 2026, Switzerland set itself to the task of Disentanglement 27. On 26 April, it said no to a consolidation perceived as a transfer. Between those two dates lies a conversation to be had: the one that adds the third tier to the work begun on the first two, that enshrines in the Constitution an automatic mechanism for the transfer of fiscal sovereignty, that restores the democratic legibility of flows between tiers, and that equips Switzerland with an observatory of transfers worthy of its disciplinary ambitions.
This diptych proposed two converging theses. First: French-speaking Switzerland and Fribourg need a calibrated municipal debt brake. Second: Switzerland needs an integrated overhaul of its three-tier fiscal federalism, of which Disentanglement 27 is only the visible half.
Anticipate, lest compaction become collapse. Integrate, because none of the three isolated disciplines has held the cascade. Enshrine in the Constitution, because a constitutional mechanism outlasts political contingency.
 

Sources

 
Disentanglement 27 and Federal Relief Programme 2027
Federal Council / Conference of Cantonal Governments (CCG), press release “Fresh start for the project on the allocation of tasks between the Confederation and the cantons”, 21 June 2024 ; Federal Finance Administration (FFA), press release “Launch of the Disentanglement 27 project”, 28 February 2025 ; CCG, dedicated page “Financial equalisation and allocation of tasks” (April 2026 update) ; Le Temps, “‘This is not a savings programme’: the allocation of federal and cantonal tasks is being reviewed”, 24 April 2026 ; SRF and RTS, news reports “The Confederation and the cantons want to clarify their respective roles”, 24 April 2026 ; Federal Department of Finance (FDF), page “Federal Relief Programme 2027”, 2025-2026 update ; FFA, press release “The Federal Council adjusts the broad lines of the Federal Relief Programme 2027 and adopts the 2026 budget”, 25 June 2025.
Institutional position of the cantons on transfers
CCG, press release “The cantons reject shifts of liabilities”, 20 September 2024 (statement by Markus Dieth) ; CCG, press release “Federal Relief Programme 2027: more work needed despite improvements”, June 2025 (statement by Florence Nater) ; CCG, press release “The cantons call on the Federal Council to revise its savings programme”, 2025.
RPT 2008 and assessment
Federal Council, Fourth Effectiveness Report on Financial Equalisation between the Confederation and the Cantons 2020-2025, 2025 ; Avenir Suisse, RPT 2 — For a revitalisation of Swiss federalism, Lukas Rühli and Natanael Rother, 2017 (updated 2021) ; Avenir Suisse, The labyrinth of financial equalisation, cantonal monitoring, 2014 (with updates) ; Avenir Suisse, blog “Financial equalisation: beware of adding too much sugar”, 26 August 2024 ; Bernard Dafflon, Local debt: from budget responsibility to fiscal discipline, FSES Working Papers 417, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland, 2010 ; Bernard Dafflon, La gestion des finances publiques locales, Paris: Economica, 1994 (subsequent editions) ; Bernard Dafflon, Panorama des impôts en Suisse. Du local au fédéral, entre équité et concurrence: quels enjeux?, Domaine Public, 2014 ; Bernard Dafflon, “La répartition des tâches cantons-communes ou le rendez-vous manqué des réformes”, University of Fribourg.
Federal debt brake and effectiveness studies
Federal Finance Administration (FFA), The Debt Brake, FDF brochure, 2023 ; Christian Pfeil and Lars P. Feld, Does the Swiss Debt Brake Induce Sound Federal Finances? A Synthetic Control Analysis, Public Finance Review, 2024 ; Avenir Suisse, blog “Cantonal annual accounts: from red to green”, March 2026 ; Avenir Suisse, Loosening the debt brake: nothing comes for free, 2024.
Fribourg — LAFE and the “amended” 2026 budget
Canton of Fribourg, Council of State, press release “Law on the consolidation of cantonal finances (LAFE): the Council of State takes note of its rejection by the Fribourg population”, 27 April 2026 ; Canton of Fribourg, Council of State, press release “The Council of State has adopted an ordinance defining indispensable expenditure in the absence of a 2026 budget”, 10 December 2025 ; RTS, “Law on the consolidation of cantonal finances rejected in Fribourg, a setback for the Council of State”, 26 April 2026 ; Le Temps, “Law on the consolidation of cantonal finances rejected in Fribourg, a major defeat for the government”, 26 April 2026 ; Avenir Suisse, blog “Cantonal annual accounts: from red to green”, Fribourg analysis, March 2026.
Trajectories: Vaud, Fribourg, municipalities
DETTEC FR, cantonal vote of 12 November 2023 (figures: Fribourg state liabilities doubled 2003-2023, Fribourg municipal liabilities +66%) ; Canton of Vaud, press release “Deficit accounts: the Council of State must activate the financial consolidation law”, 2025 ; Union of Vaud Municipalities (UCV), publication “Municipal Finance”, September 2025 ; Canton of Jura, Report on Municipal Finances 2022 and 2023, Delegate for Communal Affairs ; Municipality of Ursy, Report on the 2025 accounts, Chapter 11.
France comparison
Cour des comptes, La situation des finances publiques début 2025, February 2025 ; INSEE and French Ministry of Economy, Décryptage : 5 minutes pour comprendre la dette publique, Q2 2025 data ; OFCE, Quelles trajectoires pour les finances publiques de la France?, Policy Brief 146, 2025 ; Vie-publique.fr, Dette et dépenses publiques en 2025 : où est la France par rapport à ses partenaires?, September 2025.
Germany comparison
Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), provisional 2025 data on German municipal deficits ; Federal Ministry of Finance, Schuldenbremse — Articles 109 and 115 of the Basic Law.
Article 1/2
Mathieu Janin, “Debt brake (1/2): the Swiss success that stops at the door of the municipalities”, Mathieu Janin’s Blog, 29 April 2026.
 

On 2 December 2001, the Swiss people approved the federal debt brake by 84.7%. Twenty-five years later, on 26 April 2026, the Fribourg electorate rejected the Cantonal Finance Consolidation Act (LAFE) by 68.57%, following a referendum launched by the left and the trade unions.
Two formal votes, two clear decisions, and between them a striking coherence. Swiss voters massively support fiscal discipline when it is preventive, anticipated and fairly distributed. They reject it when it is imposed, demanded in haste and passed on to others — in the Fribourg case, partly onto the municipalities. It was not the principle of balanced public finances that was rejected on 26 April; it was the method.
I am writing this article from an ordinary municipality in the canton of Fribourg, Ursy, where on 20 April 2026 I brought a proposal to the municipal assembly to introduce a voluntary local debt brake. The 2025 accounts showed a net debt ratio of 331% and a self-financing ratio that had fallen to 1%. A citizen consultation conducted a few months earlier on a proposed municipal participation in the La Chaumière restaurant had ended with a ratio of roughly one favourable opinion to eight unfavourable — without carrying the weight of a formal popular vote, this nonetheless illustrates concretely what the cantonal and federal votes also reveal: voters are perfectly capable of distinguishing between expenditures they consider legitimate and those they no longer find acceptable.
The diagnosis is simple. The debt brake works at the federal level. It works, unevenly, in nearly every canton. But at the level where citizens actually live — the municipality — it is largely absent in French-speaking Switzerland and only partially present in Fribourg.
 

2003-2026: The Federal Debt Brake, an Exported Model

 
Before 2003, the Swiss Confederation's debt had been on a worrying upward trajectory. The debt-to-GDP ratio had risen from 8% in 1990 to roughly 25% by 2003, and the federal gross debt then stood at some 124 billion Swiss francs.
The mechanism adopted in 2001 is straightforward. Across an entire economic cycle, expenditures must not exceed revenues. A cyclical adjustment factor calibrates the annual expenditure ceiling to allow deficits during recessions and impose surpluses during boom periods. An exception clause requiring a qualified majority allows the rule to be temporarily suspended in crisis situations — it was activated during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The results are robust. According to the Federal Finance Administration, the federal debt fell from 124 to 97 billion francs between 2003 and 2019, a reduction of approximately 27 billion in seventeen years. The Confederation's debt-to-GDP ratio fell to 13.5% in 2019. Even after the extraordinary expenditures of the pandemic, it stood at 16.1% at the end of 2025 — still an enviable level by international standards.
The effectiveness of the instrument has been established by several academic studies. The synthetic control analysis by Pfeil and Feld (2024) shows that, compared to a counterfactual Switzerland without a federal debt brake, the rule has produced significant effects without depressing public investment. A recent study by Avenir Suisse estimates that without the debt brake, roughly 275 billion francs in additional debt would have accumulated since 2003.
The success was striking enough to set a precedent. Germany inscribed a Schuldenbremse in its Basic Law in 2009, modelled on the Swiss version. The European Fiscal Compact of 2012 committed most EU member states to introducing similar rules. Twenty years after its entry into force, the Swiss federal debt brake continues to enjoy broad support among the population and in Parliament.
 

The Cantons Followed Suit, But With Highly Uneven Rules

 
The cantonal story is longer and more diverse. St. Gallen — where I studied business administration at the HSG and lived for ten years before returning to the Lake Geneva region — had introduced a budgetary discipline mechanism as early as 1929, the first rule of its kind in Switzerland, and perhaps in the world. St. Gallen is no ordinary canton on these matters: a tradition of accounting prudence, frequent recourse to financial referendums, longstanding attention to public finances. The 1929 rule comes from that culture. Fribourg had a rule from 1960 onwards which imposed an automatic tax increase whenever the budgetary deficit exceeded 3% of revenues; the revised 1994 version remains classified by researchers Lars Feld and Gebhard Kirchgässner among the strictest cantonal mechanisms.
At the other end of the spectrum, the cantons of Geneva and Vaud long had more relaxed rules. Between 2012 and 2013, a wave of reforms swept through Aargau, Appenzell Outer Rhodes, Basel-Stadt and Geneva. Today, almost all 26 cantons have such a rule, but their design, their level of stringency and their sanction mechanisms differ greatly. The annual Comparative Analysis of Public Finances published by IDHEAP since 1999, together with the academic classifications by Feld et al., confirms this heterogeneity.
Aggregate results are positive but not unambiguous. Between 2010 and 2020, the median cantonal debt level remained stable at around 15% of cantonal GDP. A 2023 UBS study (Hofer and Holzhey, The Swiss Economy) notes, however, that this stability owes as much to the economic climate, to the generosity of the Swiss National Bank and to low interest rates as to the debt brakes themselves. The causal evidence for the role of cantonal debt brakes is more solidly established for periods of fiscal stress — the years 1980-2000 — when the work of Burret and Feld, of Schaltegger, or of Luechinger and Schaltegger demonstrated significant deficit reductions in cantons with strict rules.
The contrast with the present is striking. In 2024, the canton of Vaud activated for the first time in 22 years its constitutional "petit équilibre" mechanism, after a deficit of 369 million and a shortfall in cost coverage of 94 million; the Vaud Financial Consolidation Act (LAFin) imposed measures equivalent to that amount. The canton of Neuchâtel loosened its debt brake in February 2026 through a technical correction in order to recover roughly 9 million francs in annual investment leeway. Valais is debating, the Jura is adjusting — proof that cantonal debt brakes are not immobile, but that they hold.
One step lower, in the municipalities, the picture is altogether different.
 

Lucerne, Solothurn, Zurich: Three German-Swiss Models for Municipalities

 
The German-speaking experience offers three distinct architectures, which deserve close examination because they actually work.
Lucerne. On 20 June 2016, the canton adopted, by 110 votes to 3, its Law on Municipal Finances (FHGG) and the corresponding implementation ordinance (FHGV). Rather than a single debt brake, the Lucerne mechanism stacks four binding indicators: a minimum self-financing ratio of 80% averaged over five years once net debt per capita exceeds 1,500 francs; a minimum self-financing rate of 10%; debt service capped at 15% of current revenues; and a gross debt ratio capped at 200%. According to the cantonal statistical office LUSTAT, the average self-financing ratio of Lucerne's municipalities stood at 121% in 2022; in 2023, thirteen of eighty municipalities did not meet the binding threshold and were placed under specific monitoring. The City of Lucerne has additionally imposed on itself a stricter additional debt brake: a maximum budget deficit equivalent to 4% of the yield of one tax unit, which amounted to about 7.5 million francs at the time the rule was calibrated. This is precisely the kind of voluntary debt brake — set above the cantonal minimum — that I am proposing for Ursy.
Solothurn. I lived for a few months in Olten in the early 1990s. What I retained from that time was that people discussed Gemeindefinanzen at the local pub the way people in French-speaking Switzerland discuss the weather. A municipality going off the rails was news that travelled quickly. Twenty years later, the canton of Solothurn enshrined that culture in its law. The Municipal Law (§ 136 al. 3 GG) imposes a direct self-financing obligation of 80% in the next budget as soon as the net debt ratio exceeds 150% for political municipalities. The mechanism is supplemented by a graduated supervision system — the well-known Watchlist — administered by the cantonal Office for Municipalities, with four phases of increasing severity leading, in the absence of correction, to the supervision procedure provided for in articles 211 and following of the cantonal law. This is probably the most codified, most transparent and most pedagogically clear system in Switzerland: a municipality knows at all times where it stands within the framework, and what awaits it if it fails to correct course.
Zurich. The canton of Zurich opted for a hybrid approach. The cantonal Municipal Law (Gemeindegesetz of 20 April 2015, in force since 2018) requires a balanced operating budget, without a binding quantitative debt threshold. But municipal autonomy (Article 85 of the cantonal constitution) allows municipalities to go further. Several have done so. Dübendorf, in 2021, adopted a triple debt brake: medium-term balance, debt ceiling, and a stabilisation reserve set between 10% and 100% of the yield of one tax unit. Uster, Egg, and Gossau have seen similar popular initiatives. I lived for ten years in the canton of Zurich between the late 1980s and the early 2000s. Municipal votes on budgets regularly made the front pages of local newspapers, and it was not uncommon for a Voranschlag to be rejected at the assembly. The municipal executive then had to redraft. That was normal. None of my neighbours found it remarkable. The City of Bern, by contrast, rejected the introduction of a municipal debt brake in 2011, 2015 and 2020 — illustrating that this kind of rule is not politically self-evident, even when the cantonal framework permits it.
None of these three models is perfect. All offer citizens and municipal officials a level of transparency that French-speaking Switzerland does not have.
 

The French-Swiss Blind Spot: A Heterogeneous but Convergent Picture

 
No French-speaking canton has, at the municipal level, a quantitative debt brake comparable to those of Lucerne or Solothurn.
Vaud has relied since 2005 on a debt-ceiling system (Article 143 LC): each municipality sets a numerical ceiling at the start of each legislative period, and any modification during the period requires authorisation from the cantonal government. This is a political limit, not an automatic brake. The Vaud Association of Municipalities itself acknowledged this in its 2025 comparative analysis. And the figures speak for themselves. Over ten years, the debt of the canton of Vaud has declined by about 375 million francs to stand at 700 million by the end of 2023, while municipal debt has grown by 1.45 billion to reach 6.75 billion. Vaud municipal debt is today 9.6 times higher than the canton's, while municipal revenues are 1.66 times lower.
Geneva imposes on its municipalities, through the Municipal Administration Act (LAC), a strict budgetary balance requirement combined with a four-year financial plan to return to balance in case of deficit. But the current movement is towards loosening: bill 13507, under discussion in 2025, aims to introduce a cyclical reserve allowing municipalities to deviate temporarily from the rule.
Valais. The canton applies, at the cantonal level, a so-called "double debt brake" considered one of the strictest in Switzerland — it forced the cantonal parliament, in December 2025, to lower the salary indexation from 0.6% to 0.3% and to abandon the creation of twenty positions in order to comply with the rule. At the municipal level, however, articles 80 to 82 of the Municipal Law lay down a principle of long-term balance and provide for an escalation up to the appointment of a special commissioner by the cantonal government. No specific quantitative threshold.
Jura. The canton enshrined its debt brake in its constitution in 2007, by popular vote, after the tripling of cantonal debt in the 1990s. The mechanism — an 80% self-financing ratio — was recently adjusted on a transitional basis (vote accepted by 70.1% in May 2025) to neutralise the effects of the integration of Moutier. At the municipal level, however, the picture is concerning. According to the 2022 report of the Delegate for Municipal Affairs, the consolidated gross debt of the Jura municipalities reached 612 million francs, or 8,289 francs per capita, with continued upward momentum. Three out of ten indicators are classified as critical by the standards of the Conference of Cantonal Authorities for the Supervision of Municipal Finances. The Delegate himself publicly describes some municipalities as being "on life support".
Neuchâtel offers the most interesting architecture for anyone seeking a path forward for Fribourg. The Law on State and Municipal Finances (LFinEC of 24 June 2014) is, as its name implies, unified for both levels. The cantonal debt brake, in force since 2006 and broadly accepted by popular vote, has produced documented results: over the period 2006-2017, the operating account was in surplus on seven occasions with an average deficit of 13.7 million francs, compared to a single positive year over 1990-2005 with an average deficit of 43.7 million. At the municipal level, the City of Neuchâtel's regulation (RCF of 2021) explicitly refers to the LFinEC while setting its own self-financing rules. A single law for both levels, a municipal regulation that complements without contradicting. This is probably the model from which Fribourg should draw the most inspiration.
 

The German Counter-Example: When the Municipal Level Is Left Out

 
Across the Rhine, the Schuldenbremse modelled on the Swiss version was inscribed in the German Basic Law in 2009. It has been a success at the two levels it covers — the Federation and the Länder — but it explicitly excludes the municipalities (Article 109 GG), which remain subject solely to Land budgetary law. Eleven thousand municipalities and 295 districts (Landkreise) are thus left outside the federal mechanism.
The result is now documented. According to provisional data published by Destatis and taken up in 2026 by specialised analyses, the cumulative deficit of German municipalities reached 31.9 billion euros in 2025 — the worst result since reunification. Mandatory expenditures transferred from the federal level (social assistance, childcare, refugee support) are absorbed by municipalities without the German connectivity principle — "whoever orders, pays" — actually working in practice. The German mechanism works at the two levels it covers. At the third — the one it concerns least, the one that empties out in the meantime — it does nothing. This is precisely what threatens French-speaking Switzerland, and Fribourg to a lesser extent.
 

Fribourg: A Municipal Debt Brake That Exists But Cannot Be Seen

 
The Fribourg case is paradoxical. Contrary to what is sometimes said, the canton does have a municipal debt brake mechanism. It is laid down in Article 19 of the Ordinance on Municipal Finances (OFCo, in force since 1 January 2021): when the net debt ratio exceeds 200%, the average self-financing ratio over five years must reach at least 80%, failing which measures must be taken within a maximum period of five years. If those measures are not taken, Article 32 provides that the cantonal government itself sets the tax coefficients and rates for the following year — a form of fiscal guardianship.
This mechanism has been supplemented, since the 2026 financial year, by a new financial supervision concept of the Office for Municipalities, which classifies municipalities into three groups according to their operating result and net debt ratio, with systematic meetings after three years in group 2. On paper, Fribourg is therefore further advanced than Vaud, Valais or Jura.
But the comparison with the German-Swiss models reveals four structural weaknesses.
First, the trigger threshold is set too high. Solothurn activates its debt brake at 150% net debt; Fribourg waits until 200%. By the time the mechanism activates in Fribourg, a Solothurn municipality would already have been under formal monitoring for a long time.
Second, the five-year average introduces a delay in reaction. A municipality can accumulate three years of poor management without triggering the mechanism — precisely what happened in Ursy between 2023 and 2025, where the self-financing ratio fell from acceptable levels to 1% in a single accounting year, without the five-year average yet tipping over.
Third, the rule is invisible. It is buried in a little-read ordinance, without anchoring in the framework law (LFCo) itself. No public watchlist comparable to that of Solothurn. No dashboard accessible to citizens, to Fribourg municipal executives or to Vaud municipal councillors.
I have observed this invisibility from three different positions. Two terms as a municipal councillor in Forel (Lavaux) — at the Vaud legislative level. One term as a municipal councillor in Montet (Glâne), at the Fribourg executive level, before the merger with Ursy. And today, simply an active citizen at the municipal assembly of Ursy, the Fribourg legislative level. Across these three terms and that journey, I have never heard a Vaud municipal treasurer, a Fribourg municipal secretary, a mayor or an executive member cite the 200% net debt threshold as a warning signal. Not once. When I raised the question at the Ursy municipal assembly on 20 April 2026, I was told in substance that "the canton is monitoring the situation". The canton is monitoring, that is true. But it is monitoring in silence, in files that no one reads.
Fourth, the escalation towards guardianship is binary. Either the municipality complies with the rules, or the cantonal government sets its taxes. No public intermediate stages, no progressive warning system, no structured supervision comparable to the Solothurn Watchlist.
The Ursy case illustrates these limitations. When the report on the 2025 accounts was distributed to the citizens present at the municipal assembly, several faces froze when they reached page 30. Here is why. The net debt ratio reaches 331% — meaning 131 percentage points above the cantonal vigilance threshold. The self-financing ratio has fallen to 1%, against 21% in 2024. Net debt per capita stands at 9,088 francs. The final deficit is limited to 179,720 francs only thanks to a withdrawal of 995,311 francs from the revaluation reserve, which will be exhausted between 2030 and 2031. The situation should, on paper, trigger Article 19 OFCo. But because the five-year average has not yet tipped and because the supervision process is not public, the formal activation occurs late and quietly.
At the cantonal level, the 2024 report on municipal finances by the Office for Municipalities documents a worrying pattern: 55 of 126 municipalities show an operating deficit; this rises to 73 of 126 — that is, 58% — once financial operations are excluded. Cumulative reserves of 1.9 billion francs still serve as an accounting cushion. But this cushion masks rather than heals.
 

Four Trajectories, One Convergence

 
No rigorous comparison over ten or fifteen years currently allows us to measure precisely the causal effect of Swiss municipal debt brakes — the periods 2010-2025 are economically too benign to produce sharp contrasts. But four telling trajectories, drawn from official sources, deserve to be placed side by side.

Territory	Regime	Key Indicator	Recent Trajectory
Lucerne	FHGG since 2018, strict quantitative debt brake	Average self-financing ratio	Rose from 108% in 2020 to 121% in 2022; 51 of 80 municipalities are actively reducing debt
Solothurn	§ 136 GG + Watchlist	Graduated supervision	Majority of political municipalities remain in initial phases without supervisory intervention
Vaud	Debt ceiling per legislative period	Aggregate municipal debt	+27% over ten years (5.30 → 6.75 bn CHF), while the canton was deleveraging by 35%
Germany	No municipal debt brake (Art. 109 GG)	Cumulative municipal deficit	Record of 31.9 bn EUR in 2025, the worst since reunification

These trajectories, taken individually, do not prove the causal effect of a quantitative debt brake. But their convergence is hard to ignore. Where the municipal debt brake is calibrated and codified, the aggregates remain healthy. Where it is weak, absent or circumvented, the trajectories tend to diverge, at measurable rates. The municipal debt brake is no miracle cure. But its absence or weakness appears to come at a cost to municipalities — and, by extension, to citizens, who bear the consequences in the form of tax increases, service cuts, or intergenerational transfers.
 

What 26 April Actually Meant

 
On 2 December 2001, 84.7% of Swiss voters adopted a preventive debt brake at federal level, while public debt was still manageable. On 26 April 2026, 68.57% of Fribourg voters rejected a consolidation plan presented as indispensable, but perceived as belated and inequitably distributed.
A word of caution against overinterpretation. This vote does not prove that the Fribourg electorate wants a strengthened municipal debt brake — that question was not asked. A careful reading of the referendum arguments shows in fact that the opponents of the LAFE were arguing in favour of preserving public services, and reproached the centre-right majority for having lowered tax revenues too much in the past. The vote concerned the method of consolidation, not the principle of fiscal discipline.
What can be affirmed, on the other hand, is this. The LAFE was set to transfer charges from the canton to the municipalities — modest in appearance (around 10 million cumulated over three years according to the cantonal government's figures), but adding to all the pressures already weighing on municipal budgets. The 26 April rejection does not lift the constitutional balanced-budget requirement on the canton; it complicates it. The cantonal government must table a "second" 2026 budget by the June session, and opponents are now demanding the withdrawal of the entire PAFE programme, which had foreseen 405 million francs of improvements over 2026-2028.
In this context, the debate on the municipal debt brake does not depend on the LAFE outcome; it simply becomes more urgent. Fribourg municipalities will, one way or another, absorb part of the cantonal adjustment ahead. Without a robust steering mechanism, they will do so in the dark, under pressure, and probably unevenly — between those that have reserves and those that no longer do. The preventive municipal debt brake is not an act of submission to austerity. It is precisely the opposite: it is what allows a municipality to keep control over its own choices when the canton itself is losing control.
 

The LCo Has Passed; the Real Work Lies Ahead

 
A frequently confused legal point. The full revision of the LCo, which one might have considered the natural legislative vehicle, was adopted by 93 votes without opposition at the end of March 2026. But since 2018, the LCo no longer governs municipal finances. To calibrate a robust municipal debt brake, the appropriate vehicle is the LFCo and its implementing ordinance, the OFCo.
Three concrete avenues could feed a parliamentary motion or a popular initiative.
First, lower the trigger threshold of Article 19 OFCo from 200% to 150%, in line with the Solothurn standard. This single adjustment alone would have brought the Ursy intervention forward considerably.
Second, shorten the five-year average to three years to improve the responsiveness of the mechanism, and supplement the self-financing rule with a capped debt-service indicator, on the Lucerne model.
Third, publicly codify the watchlist of the Office for Municipalities, with its numerical thresholds and its sequencing, in the manner of the Solothurn Office for Municipalities. A municipality must know at all times where it stands and what that implies.
Two serious objections deserve to be addressed head-on.
The first concerns municipal autonomy. A cantonal municipal debt brake set at a low threshold does not dictate to municipalities what they must do; it sets a floor of attention beyond which a supervisory mechanism is triggered. Municipalities remain free in their choices as long as they stay in the green zone. The Neuchâtel model — a unified state-municipality LFinEC — has demonstrated for nearly twenty years that it is possible to harmonise requirements without trampling on local autonomy.
The second concerns the risk that the brake will stifle public investment. This is the argument heard on the left in French-speaking Switzerland, and it is not without weight: water, schools, mobility, energy transition — municipalities have investments to make that cannot wait until ratios are ideal. But the Lucerne figures provide an empirical answer: under the FHGG regime, since 2018, the investment ratio of Lucerne municipalities has remained at a high level (around 13-14% of current expenditures), and municipalities are not deprived of their major projects — they are simply required to self-finance a minimum share rather than passing them entirely onto debt. A well-calibrated debt brake does not kill investment; it forces investment to flow through a progressive self-financing discipline. That is a demanding constraint, but it is precisely what allows future generations to enjoy investment leeway in turn, rather than starting out burdened with the debts accumulated by their predecessors.
None of the three avenues proposed requires a revolution. All exist already in neighbouring cantons, and they work. The post-LAFE debate in Fribourg is precisely the moment to seize them.
 

Anticipate, Calibrate, Inscribe

 
The debt brake is not an ideology. It is a discipline. The Confederation adopted it in 2003 and is the better for it. Most cantons have followed suit, with uneven but convergent results. Some German-Swiss municipalities have done likewise.
I saw this discipline at work in St. Gallen during my studies and beyond. I encountered it again in Olten and in the Zurich suburbs. I then looked for it as I returned to French-speaking Switzerland, and I did not find it. Not because French-Swiss municipalities are any less serious — they are not, I have served on enough councils on both sides of the linguistic divide to know it. But because no one has given them the same measurement tools.
Thirty years working in both languages, ten years in the canton of St. Gallen, ten years in Zurich, and now Fribourg: if the Röstigraben of municipal finances teaches me one thing, it is that the difference between the two Switzerlands on this question is not cultural in any essentialist sense — it is institutional. Solothurners are not more cautious by nature; they have a Watchlist. Lucerners are not more rigorous by temperament; they have the FHGG. German-Swiss municipal discipline rests on tools. Those tools are reproducible. French-speaking Switzerland can adopt them — Neuchâtel has done so partially, and Fribourg could be next.
Anticipate rather than endure. Calibrate a solid municipal debt brake — neither a Solothurn import nor a French-Swiss vagueness, but an assumed Fribourg solution. And inscribe it in the law before the next LAFE forces us to do so under pressure.
The question now is who will open the worksite. A letter to the parliamentarians in charge of institutional matters. Joint work with the Association of Fribourg Municipalities. And, should Parliament hesitate, the filing of a cantonal popular initiative. None of these three avenues has yet been pursued in Fribourg on this subject. The ground is open. I am ready to break it with those who share this diagnosis.

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There remains a question that this article has not asked, and that deserves to be treated separately: does this system, even when supplemented by a robust municipal debt brake, actually function as fiscal discipline — or is it not in part a silent mechanism for cascading the burden, from the Confederation to the cantons, then from the cantons to the municipalities? The "Disentanglement 27" project, whose interim report was published on 24 April 2026, two days before the LAFE vote, addresses the question for the Confederation-canton pair. It leaves out the municipal level. The second instalment of this diptych will address precisely that blind spot, and propose four principles for an integrated overhaul of Swiss fiscal federalism.

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Sources

 

Federal Debt Brake and Theoretical Framework

• Federal Finance Administration (FFA), The Debt Brake, brochure of the FDF, 17 August 2023.
• FFA, communication "The debt brake, a fundamental mechanism of Swiss budgetary policy, celebrates its 20th anniversary", 5 September 2023.
• Federal Department of Finance (FDF), page "The Confederation's debt", updated 2025.
• Kaspar Villiger, "Looking back at the genesis of the debt brake", The Swiss Economy, November 2023.
• Christian Pfeil and Lars P. Feld, Does the Swiss Debt Brake Induce Sound Federal Finances? A Synthetic Control Analysis, Public Finance Review, 2024.
• Martin Mosler and Christoph Schaltegger, The Swiss Debt Brake Is Democratic, Strict, Transparent, and Binding, The Economists' Voice, 2024.
• Avenir Suisse, Loosening the Debt Brake: Nothing Comes for Free, 2024.

Cantons and General Theory

• Lars P. Feld, Gebhard Kirchgässner et al., On the Effectiveness of Debt Brakes: The Swiss Experience, CREMA Working Paper; and Fiscal Institutions at the Cantonal Level in Switzerland, Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, 2013.
• IDHEAP-UNIL, Comparative Analysis of Cantonal and Municipal Finances, annual series since 1999.
• Katharina Hofer and Matthias Holzhey (UBS), "Cantonal public finances: ready to face headwinds?", The Swiss Economy, November 2023.
• Mireille Yerly, "Budgetary rules between flexibility and rigidity: the situation of Swiss cantons", The Swiss Economy, June 2014.
• Bernard Dafflon, various works on Swiss local finances, University of Fribourg.

Lucerne

• Canton of Lucerne, Gesetz über den Finanzhaushalt der Gemeinden (FHGG, SRL no. 160), 20 June 2016.
• Canton of Lucerne, Finanzhaushaltsverordnung der Gemeinden (FHGV).
• Lucerne Department of Finance, Handbuch zum Gesetz über den Finanzhaushalt der Gemeinden.
• LUSTAT Statistik Luzern, municipal financial indicators 2019-2023.
• City of Lucerne, Bericht und Antrag 18/2023 — Teilrevision der Gemeindeordnung und Anpassung der Schuldenbremse; Aufgaben- und Finanzplan 2025-2028.

Solothurn

• Canton of Solothurn, Office for Municipalities, page "Schuldencontrolling Gemeinden", § 136 al. 3 and 211 ff. of the Municipal Law.

Zurich

• Canton of Zurich, Gemeindegesetz of 20 April 2015, in force since 2018.
• Canton of Zurich, Office for Municipalities, Handbuch über den Finanzhaushalt der Zürcher Gemeinden, 2021 version.
• VZF, Finanzielle Führung von Zürcher Gemeinden und Städten, 2021.
• NZZ, "Zurich: the debt brake is a political success and yet contested", October 2023.

Bern

• Der Bund / Berner Zeitung, articles on the Schuldenbremse votes of the City of Bern (2011, 2015, 2020).
• Department of the Interior and Justice of the Canton of Bern, page on Municipal Finances.

Vaud

• Canton of Vaud, Municipal Law (LC, BLV 175.11), in particular Art. 143; Guide to setting the debt ceiling 2021-2026.
• Vaud Association of Municipalities (UCV), Debt ceiling: a practical guide, 2019, and publication "Municipal Finances", September 2025.
• Canton of Vaud, communication "Deficit accounts: the cantonal government must activate the financial consolidation law", 2025.

Geneva

• Canton of Geneva, Municipal Administration Act (LAC, B 6 05) and Implementing Regulation (RAC).
• Canton of Geneva, Act on the Administrative and Financial Management of the State (LGAF, D 1 05).
• Geneva Cantonal Parliament, bill 13507 amending the LAC (cyclical reserve), 2024-2025.
• City of Geneva, communication on the 2026 draft budget.

Valais

• Canton of Valais, Municipal Law (RS 175.1), Art. 80-82.
• Canton of Valais, Ordinance on the Financial Management of Municipalities (RS 611.102).
• Service for Internal and Municipal Affairs (SAIC) of Valais.
• RTS, "The Valais Cantonal Parliament approves the 2026 budget but cuts the full salary indexation", 19 December 2025.

Neuchâtel

• Canton of Neuchâtel, Law on State and Municipal Finances (LFinEC, RSN 601), 24 June 2014.
• City of Neuchâtel, Municipal Financial Regulation (RCF), 7 June 2021.
• Canton of Neuchâtel, communication "Financial management: priority on stability and investment", 31 August 2018.
• KOF (ETH Zurich), Florian Chatagny, study on tax revenue smoothing and the Neuchâtel debt brake, 2018.
• Canal Alpha, "Neuchâtel loosens the debt brake", February 2026.

Jura

• Canton of Jura, Reports on Municipal Finances 2022 and 2023, Delegate for Municipal Affairs.
• Canton of Jura, communications "Debt brake project" (2007), "Transitional adjustment of the debt brake" (2024) and "Popular acceptance 70.1%" (18 May 2025).

Fribourg — Legal Framework and Finances

• Canton of Fribourg, Municipal Law (LCo, RSF 140.1), 1980 version and full revision adopted by the Cantonal Parliament by 93 votes without opposition (March 2026).
• Canton of Fribourg, Law on Municipal Finances (LFCo, RSF 140.6) of 22 March 2018.
• Canton of Fribourg, Ordinance on Municipal Finances (OFCo, RSF 140.61), in force on 1 January 2021, Art. 19, 32, 33.
• Office for Municipalities (SCom) of Fribourg, page "Financial supervision concept", implementation 2026; Report on Municipal Finances 2024.
• Department of Institutions, Agriculture and Forests (DIAF), pages "Full revision of the Municipal Law" and "Popular vote LAFE of 26 April 2026".
• RTS, "The Fribourg Parliament accepts the revision of the Municipal Law", March 2026.
• Cantonal Government of Fribourg, communication "The Cantonal Government takes note of the rejection by the Fribourg population", 27 April 2026.
• Le Temps, "The Cantonal Finance Consolidation Act swept aside in Fribourg", 26 April 2026; RTS, Forum, 26-27 April 2026; La Liberté, live coverage of the votes of 26 April 2026.

Ursy and Montet (Glâne)

• Municipality of Ursy, Report on the 2025 Accounts, chapter 11 page 30; minutes of the municipal assemblies of 26 May 2025, 15 December 2025 and 20 April 2026.
• Municipality of Montet (Glâne), minutes of the municipal council (legislative period preceding the merger with Ursy).

Forel (Lavaux)

• Municipality of Forel (Lavaux), minutes of the municipal council (two legislative periods, Vaud legislative level).

International Comparison

• Federal Statistical Office of Germany (Destatis), provisional 2025 data on German municipal deficits; Staatsverschuldung.de, 2026 analyses.
• Federal Ministry of Finance (Germany), Schuldenbremse — Art. 109 and 115 GG, provisions exclusive to the Federation and the Länder.
• Direction générale du Trésor (France), "Switzerland: economic and financial situation", 2025.