Swiss government warns against cancelling EU free-movement pact

[snoop1130]

Swiss government warns against cancelling EU free-movement pact

 

FILE PHOTO: Switzerland's national flag flies beside the one of the Council of Europe at the Swiss federal parliament Bundeshaus in Bern, Switzerland September 3, 2019. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo

 

ZURICH (Reuters) - The Swiss government on Tuesday urged voters to reject a referendum push by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party to end an accord with the European Union on the free movement of citizens.

 

Should the measure win a binding vote on May 17 in what is being called Switzerland’s “Brexit moment”, the country risks losing its privileged access to the EU single market that is the lifeblood of the export-led Swiss economy.

 

It could also end up kicking neutral Switzerland, which is not a member of the EU, out of the Schengen system of passport-free travel and the Dublin accord on handling asylum requests, officials said in a statement ahead of a news conference.

 

“That would have painful consequences, primarily for security and asylum issues but also for border traffic and freedom to travel,” the government said.

 

The referendum drive reflects unease with the influx of foreigners. Immigration contributed a net 55,000 people last year, when the foreign population stood at 2.1 million, or around a quarter of the overall 8.5 million.

 

Business leaders say they need skilled foreign workers, and imposing limits on EU citizens would violate the free-movement accord that enhances Swiss access to the single market.

 

A “guillotine clause” means ending free movement would scupper other pillars in a web of 120 custom-made bilateral pacts, including accords on the mutual recognition of industrial standards, public procurement, agriculture, research, and transport by land and air.

 

The eurosceptic People’s Party — the biggest in parliament and with two of the seven federal cabinet seats — has long fought to take national control of immigration.

 

Its proposal under the Swiss system of direct democracy would allow a year to negotiate an end to free movement, but chances of this are practically nil given the EU’s hard line on a key policy tenet.

 

Battling the referendum campaign is a priority for the Swiss government, which has struggled to put relations with the surrounding EU on a new footing.

 

Brussels wants the Swiss to endorse a new treaty that would have Bern routinely adopt single market rules and create a more effective platform to resolve disputes.

 

The Swiss government has dragged its feet for months while trying to forge consensus on how to proceed, annoying Brussels and triggering a row over cross-border stock trading.

 

The treaty ran aground amid opposition that spanned the normally pro-Europe centre left to the anti-EU far right. Critics say the pact infringes Swiss sovereignty to the extent that it would never get through parliament or pass a referendum.

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-02-11

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[melvinmelvin]

pretty surprising and interesting tht CH officially takes that view

 

[tgw]

21 minutes ago, melvinmelvin said:

pretty surprising and interesting tht CH officially takes that view

 

actually it's not.

when there are referendums, the Swiss government always states its position about the issue.

Edited February 11, 2020 by tgw

[melvinmelvin]

5 hours ago, tgw said:

actually it's not.

when there are referendums, the Swiss government always states its position about the issue.

yes

 

but this clear position surprised me,

in this part. case I would have expected a more watered out view to be expressed

[xerostar]

The Swiss need to secede from the EU in order to return Swiss sovereignty, law and order.

They have seen their once pristine country invaded by unemployable foreigners who have placed a huge burden on the welfare and the police at the expense of its own citizens.   

[steve187]

the free movement will be the death of the EU, all those ex soviet members entering were the final straw, and still they want more quote from here - https://www.rferl.org/a/eu-ex-soviet-republics-to-extend-partnership-beyond-2020/29863540.html

''The foreign ministers of the European Union and six former Soviet republics will meet next month to endorse an extension of the Eastern Partnership Program.
The program aims to encourage Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine to undertake reforms, in return for closer relations and economic benefits.''

[RichardColeman]

I wonder if the result would be influenced by Germany enforcing them take 1 million Africans and Middle easterners in the coming years. 

[Sydebolle]

It is precisely the "painful consequences, primarily for security and asylum issues". Never read more bu11..... 

Security will drastically increase as the Swiss will know, who is in and out of their country. Asylum issues have always been a top priority for the Swiss. Go back in recent history; 60 years ago the Tibetan, ten years after that the Hungarians, another ten years down the line the Tamils (Sri Lankans) etc. etc. 
One in four persons residing in Switzerland is a foreigner born in a foreign land, that is ONE QUARTER of the entire population. The EU in general and Germany in particular just promoted free flow of asylum chancers who have no intention whatsoever to integrate, to learn the language, to work for their living nor to contribute to the social welfare nor the GDP. 

So, in all honesty, I can certainly level with the hillbillies in the helvetic alps. They want nothing but a control mechanism back to ensure, that they know, who is in the country. It worked before and it will work afterwards with the difference, that fake refugees will have a hell of a time to get closer to the social welfare pots of Switzerland.

Keep fingers crossed, Switzerland, you saw the screaming over Brexit and over anything else which might reduce the power of the EU clowns in Brussels. Remember, they got never voted into office, have no bottom line to meet and rule with fear in full steam towards, what some call, a new order of governance. 

[Ettore Santo Zoppis]

2 hours ago, xerostar said:

The Swiss need to secede from the EU in order to return Swiss sovereignty, law and order.

They have seen their once pristine country invaded by unemployable foreigners who have placed a huge burden on the welfare and the police at the expense of its own citizens.   

Yes I agree 100%. 

[micmichd]

2 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

I wonder if the result would be influenced by Germany enforcing them take 1 million Africans and Middle easterners in the coming years. 

Yes, of course. Every vote against the EU is a vote against Germany and its immigration policy. 

[Proboscis]

2 hours ago, xerostar said:

The Swiss need to secede from the EU in order to return Swiss sovereignty, law and order.

They have seen their once pristine country invaded by unemployable foreigners who have placed a huge burden on the welfare and the police at the expense of its own citizens.   

The Swiss are not in the EU.

Even countries as far away as Australia and Japan have deep trade agreements with the EU.

 

The country relies on both foreigners who can apply for a special permit to work in the country while residing in a neighbouring country. Foreigners can also apply for a work permit to live in and work in the country.

 

The reason for this dependence on foreign workers is that Switzerland has an extremely low unemployment rate.

 

It is impossible for an EU citizen just to go and live in Switzerland and to claim off their benefits system. All work permits require a job. There is no huge burden on the welfare state.

 

The real issue that this referendum is concerned with is the movement of EU citizens THROUGH Switzerland, say from France or Germany to Italy. It has nothing to do with employment.

[Scott Tracy]

The European Union bureaucrats wants everyone to be more like them. Change to our ways and you'll benefit. Benefit how? What will it cost? EU Council, Commision and Parliament want to rule the whole of Europe. A federal European State run by Brussels and Strassburg.

[Scott Tracy]

It was revealed recently that Australia does NOT have a trade agreement with the EU.

[geriatrickid]

12 minutes ago, micmichd said:

Yes, of course. Every vote against the EU is a vote against Germany and its immigration policy. 

As much as some criticize Germany, it tried to do the right thing. A large  number of the refugees from Africa are a direct result of  European investment decisions and are a legacy of their colonial era. Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Italy, the UK, Germany and France did some serious damage with their imposition of borders and creation of countries that went against existing delineations.  The problems of Syria and Lebanon owe their root causes to the Ottoman Empire replaced by French colonial rule. The same for North Africa. The war and turmoil in Libya started with the Italian and French oil interests. And involved in all of this were the Swiss. The dictators of  Africa and  the Middle east kept their stolen money in Swiss  banks along with those in Luxembourg. The Swiss had no issue accepting billions of questionable Euro, whether it was the investment houses, banks who took the deposits or the government which refused to regulate, or the Swiss people who looked the other way. The refugees are the  cost of taking that money.

 

As for the criticism of some of the eastern European countries, it is misdirected.   The largest group of foreign workers comes from Italy.   As the Swiss businesses point out, they do need  skilled labour. Despite all the negative comments,  The Poles, Hungarians, Czechs et al are hard workers doing jobs that are not filled locally.

Foreigners are over represented in low-skilled occupations, that Swiss citizens do not wish  to do and where unemployment rates in general are higher. Go into a Swiss restaurant or hotel and it is a foreigner washing dishes or cleaning the floors.  

 

Switzerland would collapse without is foreign workers.

[fvw53]

3 hours ago, xerostar said:

The Swiss need to secede from the EU in order to return Swiss sovereignty, law and order.

They have seen their once pristine country invaded by unemployable foreigners who have placed a huge burden on the welfare and the police at the expense of its own citizens.   

Switzerland is NOT a member of the EU but the country joined the "Schengen area" agreement with the EU.

[Jare]

3 hours ago, xerostar said:

The Swiss need to secede from the EU in order to return Swiss sovereignty, law and order.

They have seen their once pristine country invaded by unemployable foreigners who have placed a huge burden on the welfare and the police at the expense of its own citizens.   

Switzerland has never been in the EU... it even says that Switzerland is not in the EU in the article...

 

There are a large percentage of foreign workers in Switzerland, and the process for getting them work permits is very thorough, so it's not really accurate to say they are "invaded by unemployable foreigners", as might be the case in other European countries.

The Swiss system is pretty good really, because Cantons have much more power subsidiarity than local governments in other European countries, and the central government in Switzerland is not as powerful as in other European countries. To become a Swiss citizen takes a lot of effort and integration - ten years, and then citizens are voted into citizenship by citizens of a Canton, it's arguably the most democratic way of having immigration in the world. For those who are effectively guestworkers, they can be deported without much difficulty if the Swiss people decide that they are unhappy with any aspect of the situation.

 

The issue over immigration is similar with other European countries - business will always make the case for more people because they want to get the broadest range of candidates possible, and that includes both in terms of upward pressure on skills and how much downward pressure they can put on salaries, and the government will also tend to support this because they may believe that immigrant labour increases GDP over the short term, to support electoral cycles; in contrast the citizenry tend to oppose because they will experience pressure on access to public services, employmen, and upward pressure on accommodation costs due to there being more human bodies to accommodate, and of course, as immigrants are less likely to have family connections in the destination country, that pressure will lean more on rental accommodation than purchased accommodation. Citizens may also feel that business should invest in training of local people and take a more long-term view, because that is clearly in the interests of the citizenry, instead of taking a short-term view and favouring imported ready-to-work labour, which may also be willing to accept lower pay and conditions that are still superior to what they might get in their source country.

 

23 minutes ago, geriatrickid said:

As much as some criticize Germany, it tried to do the right thing. A large  number of the refugees from Africa are a direct result of  European investment decisions and are a legacy of their colonial era. Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Italy, the UK, Germany and France did some serious damage with their imposition of borders and creation of countries that went against existing delineations.  The problems of Syria and Lebanon owe their root causes to the Ottoman Empire replaced by French colonial rule. The same for North Africa. The war and turmoil in Libya started with the Italian and French oil interests.

This may have a part to play historically, but the recent triggers are to do with the collapse of states that resulted during the "Arab Spring", with some encouragement by President Obama, and Angela Merkel.

The colonial era was tapering off during the 1960s, and it's now about 50 years ago. It's worth noting that whilst there were some kingdoms, there were effectively no deliniated borders in Africa, and whilst it may be true that many ethno-linguistic groups were divided by foreign-imposed borders, you don't state what the "serious damage" was. If you imagine an alternative history where African countries and states are more-or-less ethnically homogenous, do you imagine that they all become many little Wakandas?

I would agree that a country like Thailand with a unifying sense of identity, even if it's a bit contrived, has done better than a more made-up and fractured country like Indonesia. If you look at a comparable country in Africa, Ethiopia, with it's own lack of colonisation and strong sense of unified identity, it doesn't appear to have fared much better than many of its neighbours. Perhaps due to the Cold War game.

 

The difficulty with what Germany did, was it appeared to effectively unilaterally suspend immigration and refugee law, international law, and treaty law, in response to media emotive pressure. The outcome was that a significant number of people who are young and fit and look like economic migrants were given access without normal checks and controls, and human traffickers were encouraged, increasing exploitation of desperate people, and the truly vulnerable for whom refugee treaties are intended to protect, were left behind in the worst conditions. A minority of the apparent economic migrants ended up getting in the news in Germany and other places for committing crimes such as offences against women, and this has contributed, rightly-or-wrongly, to hostility to them, and hostility to the treaties and legislation to do with refugees. The ultimate outcome of "Germany trying to do the right thing" is that the suffering of a great many people is allowed to persist, and faith in authority figures to enforce rules designed to manage these situations is in decline. This is why "doing the right thing" has to be along the lines of adhering to international agreements on how to handle things. Deviating from that, undermines support for it, and emotively criticising people for becoming hostile is missing that bigger picture point.

The positive impact from putting resources in refugee camps in situ, and requiring those economic migrants to stay and help their own people would be far greater than having large numbers of undocumented migrants trying to illegally cross land and sea, facing serious hazards and facilitating the economic exploitation of such people, in the vague hope they might send some money back home to help.

23 minutes ago, geriatrickid said:

And involved in all of this were the Swiss. The dictators of  Africa and  the Middle east kept their stolen money in Swiss  banks along with those in Luxembourg. The Swiss had no issue accepting billions of questionable Euro, whether it was the investment houses, banks who took the deposits or the government which refused to regulate, or the Swiss people who looked the other way. The refugees are the  cost of taking that money.

 

As for the criticism of some of the eastern European countries, it is misdirected.   The largest group of foreign workers comes from Italy. 

Not all are Italian, and there are particualar categories of work filled by foreign workers at different amounts.

23 minutes ago, geriatrickid said:

 As the Swiss businesses point out, they do need  skilled labour.

As you state below, a large proportion of foreign workers are non-skilled labour, not skilled labour.

"need" means that to maintain their current business model, and business models always change to respond to the market, because markets are not static. Swiss businesses want to keep downward pressure on wage costs. e.g.: You will always here engineering companies say there is a shortage of engineers, but there never is, what they are trying to do is keep engineer salaries from rising too much, and also because companies are averse to investing time and money in training of staff they recruit. What they want is twice the skill level for half the price, to make their profits nice. It's a very capitalist outlook.

23 minutes ago, geriatrickid said:

Despite all the negative comments,  The Poles, Hungarians, Czechs et al are hard workers doing jobs that are not filled locally.

Foreigners are over represented in low-skilled occupations, that Swiss citizens do not wish  to do and where unemployment rates in general are higher. Go into a Swiss restaurant or hotel and it is a foreigner washing dishes or cleaning the floors.  

The phrase "do not wish to do" is always missing the second part "...for the price currently offered". In a scenario where there are no longer large numbers of low-skilled foreign workers, the market adjusts and the price rises to meet the level that the low-skilled local workers require to meet typical living costs.

23 minutes ago, geriatrickid said:

 

Switzerland would collapse without is foreign workers.

That last sentence is a bit of a reach. There are very few countries in the world that "would collapse without ... foreign workers", of those, more likely would be countries in the Arabian region where large numbers of workers from countries like Bangladesh and Philippines fill large sections of the economy.

[soalbundy]

56 minutes ago, geriatrickid said:

As much as some criticize Germany, it tried to do the right thing. A large  number of the refugees from Africa are a direct result of  European investment decisions and are a legacy of their colonial era. Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Italy, the UK, Germany and France did some serious damage with their imposition of borders and creation of countries that went against existing delineations.  The problems of Syria and Lebanon owe their root causes to the Ottoman Empire replaced by French colonial rule. The same for North Africa. The war and turmoil in Libya started with the Italian and French oil interests. And involved in all of this were the Swiss. The dictators of  Africa and  the Middle east kept their stolen money in Swiss  banks along with those in Luxembourg. The Swiss had no issue accepting billions of questionable Euro, whether it was the investment houses, banks who took the deposits or the government which refused to regulate, or the Swiss people who looked the other way. The refugees are the  cost of taking that money.

 

As for the criticism of some of the eastern European countries, it is misdirected.   The largest group of foreign workers comes from Italy.   As the Swiss businesses point out, they do need  skilled labour. Despite all the negative comments,  The Poles, Hungarians, Czechs et al are hard workers doing jobs that are not filled locally.

Foreigners are over represented in low-skilled occupations, that Swiss citizens do not wish  to do and where unemployment rates in general are higher. Go into a Swiss restaurant or hotel and it is a foreigner washing dishes or cleaning the floors.  

 

Switzerland would collapse without is foreign workers.

One post of reason against all the anti-EU hysteria.

[Nigel Garvie]

2 hours ago, soalbundy said:

One post of reason against all the anti-EU hysteria.

Two excellent and well informed posts from Geriatrickid and Jare. When I worked as a labourer in Switzerland many many years ago, the other workers were Swiss. The main guest workers were Yugoslavs. It is a complex question, the employment of cheaper foreign labour is a Capitalists wet dream, but unless you have a decent minimum wage then that will always happen. The guest worker system has it's benefits, not least that it dims the cries of the immigrant haters when it is clear that they are only here (Wherever) to do a job, and cannot get the full range of benefits. However people have families, no one wants to live apart from their loved ones for long periods of time.

 

I think that it would be hard to deny that a proportion of European citizens (In the UK anyway) are indeed workshy, and happy to live on benefits while others do the basic jobs. Ironically these tend to be the people who shout the loudest about immigrants taking their jobs.

 

The internal problems of the ME and African countries, are to an extent linked to colonial errors and self interest, but currently I feel climate change making farming in the Sahel and elsewhere untenable, is becoming the main migration driver.

[bristolboy]

9 hours ago, xerostar said:

The Swiss need to secede from the EU in order to return Swiss sovereignty, law and order.

They have seen their once pristine country invaded by unemployable foreigners who have placed a huge burden on the welfare and the police at the expense of its own citizens.   

Yes, those lawless foreigners have resulted in a startling decline in public safety in Switzerland:

https://knoema.com/atlas/Switzerland/Homicide-rate

or maybe not...

[puipuitom]

17 hours ago, Proboscis said:

Even countries as far away as Australia and Japan have deep trade agreements with the EU.

Australia has ZERO agreements with teh EU. In negociation, yes, but concluded: Nothing.

[puipuitom]

17 hours ago, Scott Tracy said:

The European Union bureaucrats wants everyone to be more like them. Change to our ways and you'll benefit. Benefit how? What will it cost? EU Council, Commision and Parliament want to rule the whole of Europe. A federal European State run by Brussels and Strassburg.

The EU council exists of the heads of government of the EU member states. How tro rule the whole of Europe ? They already do since founding, each in her/his own EU member state.

EU Commission is nothing more as a kind of council of ministers, one from each EU member state.

The EU parliament exists of elected persons in each EU member state. The British left 31 Jan. 

 

Time you learn something of how the EU functions. 

[Bluespunk]

22 hours ago, soalbundy said:

One post of reason against all the anti-EU hysteria.

Lot of project fear posts though.