A Nazi flag displayed on an arms exchange, symbols of the Third Reich, sold on the Internet… This is nothing unusual in Switzerland, where the display and sale of Nazi items is not prohibited, unlike in other European countries, reports AFP.

The situation may change, at least in the canton of Geneva. In January, regional politicians – both left and right – presented a text that “prohibits the display or wearing of Nazi symbols, emblems or any other items in public.”

On Friday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Geneva parliament voted 56 to 28 in favor of the text.

It must then be adopted by the council in Geneva and then by the federal parliament in Bern before a popular referendum in Geneva.

“This text is welcome, necessary and useful,” said Francois Lefort, a member of the Greens.

“There is no belated action to prevent the expression of Nazi ideas through these objects,” one of the signatories of the text, Liberal MP Alexis Barby, told AFP.

Exceptions should be museums and cinemas.

“The symbolic value is very high, because for more than 20 years different politicians from different parties have tried to ban these Nazi symbols and objects,” commented the far-right SVP MP Thomas Blazey, who initiated the text.

“Nazism has no place in Europe, it has no place in Switzerland,” Blaise, who is the nephew of French Colonel Gaston de Bonneval, a former deputy to General de Gaulle, told AFP.

Arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, he was exiled to Mauthausen for almost two years. About 200,000 prisoners passed through this concentration camp, liberated in May 1945, almost half of whom died, were starved, gassed or executed.