The frontalieri: numbers, origins and sectors

Two definitions of the cross-border worker

The Italian word frontaliere (German Grenzgänger, French frontalier) has two legal meanings that practitioners must keep apart. Under the law on foreign nationals, a cross-border commuter is an EU or EFTA citizen who lives in an EU or EFTA State, works in Switzerland and returns to the foreign residence at least once a week. Such a person receives a cross-border commuter permit (permit G). It is valid for five years when the employment contract is of indefinite duration or exceeds one year, and for the duration of the contract otherwise. Since the end of the transitional periods of the free movement agreement, the former frontier zones have been abolished, so that a holder of a G permit may live anywhere in the EU or EFTA and work anywhere in Switzerland. Work of up to three months a year requires only an online notification.¹

Tax law uses a narrower definition. Under the agreement between Switzerland and Italy on the taxation of cross-border workers of 23 December 2020, a cross-border worker is a person who is resident in a municipality whose territory lies wholly or partly within twenty kilometres of the border, who works for an employer in the border area of the other State, and who in principle returns daily to the place of residence. On the Swiss side the border area consists of the cantons of Graubünden, Ticino and Valais, on the Italian side of the Regions of Lombardy, Piedmont and Aosta Valley and the Autonomous Province of Bolzano.² A worker who lives in Milan and holds a G permit for a job in Lugano is therefore a frontaliere for the migration authorities but not for the tax authorities. The Ticino tax administration counted about 11,000 such "nonqualifying" cases among the persons taxed at source in 2024, either because they did not return daily, lived outside the twenty-kilometre zone or lived in a municipality not included in the lists.³ The statistics quoted in this section follow the migration definition, because they are based on G permits.

Growth over three decades

The number of cross-border commuters in Ticino has roughly doubled in twenty years. Samuele Vorpe gives about 33,000 for 2003 and more than 70,000 for 2020.⁴ A USTAT study of the cantonal economy published in November 2024 counted 76,739 crossborder workers in 2022, an increase of 46.3 per cent over 2011. Their share in total employment rose over the same period from 24.6 to 30.7 per cent.⁵ The number reached more than 81,000 in 2023 and then fell slightly, to just under 80,000 in 2025. In the third quarter of 2025 USTAT counted 79,812 cross-border commuters, in the fourth quarter 78,809, a decline of 1.0 per cent over the previous quarter and of 0.2 per cent over the previous year.⁶ In the second quarter of 2026 the figure was 79,121, which was 0.6 per cent lower than a year earlier.⁷ Total employment in Ticino in the fourth quarter of 2025 was 242,253 persons, so that cross-border commuters represented about 32.5 per cent of the persons employed in the canton.⁸

Period Cross-border commuters in Note Ticino 2003 about 33,000 Vorpe 2011 about 52,500 derived from USTAT 2024 2020 more than 70,000 Vorpe 2022 76,739 30.7% of employment Q3 2025 79,812 USTAT Q4 2025 78,809 about 32.5% of employment Q2 2026 79,121 − 0.6% year on year

Table 2: Cross-border commuters (G permits) working in Ticino. Sources: as in the footnotes to this section.

The national picture has developed differently. Across Switzerland the number of cross-border commuters grew by 18.3 per cent in the five years to the second quarter of 2026, from about 350,000 to 414,262. The growth came almost entirely from France. In the year to the second quarter of 2026 the number of commuters resident in France rose by 2.7 per cent while those resident in Italy fell by 1.1 per cent and those resident in Germany by 0.2 per cent.⁹ USTAT attributes the flattening of the Ticino curve partly to the new tax regime: after its implementation in the third quarter of 2023 "a slight contraction emerged", followed by stabilization.¹⁰ Other explanations offered in the public debate are the low unemployment on the Italian side, the demographic decline of the border provinces and the levy on "old" cross-border workers announced by Italy, which is discussed below. None of these explanations has yet been tested statistically.

Notes

1. State Secretariat for Migration (SEM), "Permesso per frontalieri G (cittadini UE/AELS)", last updated 1 January 2022, https://www.sem.admin.ch/sem/it/home/themen/aufenthalt/eu_efta/ausweis_g_eu_efta.html. Agreement of 21 June 1999 between the Swiss Confederation and the European Community and its Member States on the Free Movement of Persons (AFMP), SR 0.142.112.681, Annex I, Art. 7 (definition of the employed frontier worker who returns "as a rule daily or at least once a week"; special permit valid for at least five years or for the duration of employment between three months and one year), https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/de-it/0.1/0.14/0.142.112.681-annexI-lvlu1-lvlII-7-35.html, and Art. 28 (transitional rules with frontier zones), https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/de-it/0.1/0.14/0.142.112.681-annexI-lvlu1-lvlVII-28-56.html. ↩
2. Federal Tax Administration and Cantonal Tax Administrations of Graubünden, Ticino and Valais, Nuovo accordo sull'imposizione dei lavoratori frontalieri: foglio informativo e FAQ, https://m4.ti.ch/fileadmin/DFE/DC/DOC-IF/nuovo_accordo/nuovo_accordo_foglio_informat ivo_FAQ.pdf. The agreement itself is the Agreement between the Swiss Confederation and the Italian Republic on the taxation of cross-border workers of 23 December 2020, Art. 2. ↩
3. "Frontalieri nel nuovo regime fiscale, le cifre", RSI, March 2025, https://www.rsi.ch/info/ticino-grigioni-e-insubria/Frontalieri-nel-nuovo-regime-fiscale-le-cifre--2688293.html. ↩
4. Samuele Vorpe, "Il nuovo accordo sulla fiscalità dei lavoratori frontalieri tra Svizzera ed Italia", Rivista ticinese di diritto II-2021, https://sites.supsi.ch/fisco/dms/fisco/docs/pubblicazioni/articoli/ Estratto_RtiD_II-2021_Vorpe.pdf. ↩
5. Vincenza Giancone, I comparti economici: struttura ed evoluzione del tessuto economico ticinese (USTAT, Giubiasco, November 2024), https://www3.ti.ch/DFE/DR/USTAT/allegati/volume/ed_2024_15.pdf. The figure of about 52,500 for 2011 in Table 2 is derived from the stated increase of 46.3 per cent. ↩
6. USTAT, Notiziario statistico 2025-42 (above) for the third quarter; USTAT, Notiziario statistico 2026-07 (Giubiasco, 2026), https://www3.ti.ch/DFE/DR/USTAT/allegati/news/258021ns_2026-07.pdf, for the fourth quarter. Notiziario statistico 2025-42 states that the commuters "sono calati dagli oltre 81.000 del 2023 a poco meno di 80.000 nel 2025"; Notiziario statistico 2026-07 dates the change of trend to the fourth quarter of 2023. ↩
7. Tio.ch, 6 August 2026 (above). ↩
8. USTAT, Notiziario statistico 2026-07 (above): 242,253 persons employed (domestic concept). The share of 32.5 per cent is calculated from these figures. ↩
9. Tio.ch, 6 August 2026 (above); swissinfo.ch, 6 August 2026 (above). ↩
10. USTAT, Notiziario statistico 2026-07 (above). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.