Brussels, 15/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - Next month, the EU will adopt its position on the future of EU-Swiss relations and in an address in Lausanne, Switzerland, last Friday to the Jean Monnet Foundation for Europe, EU Justice Commissioner and Vice-President of the European Commission Viviane Reding discussed the matter. Her speech comes ahead of the visit to Brussels on Monday 15 November of the Swiss foreign minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Swiss Mission to the EU.
Viviane Reding did not mince her words, saying that the “bilateral route” that governs EU-Swiss relations' “takes time”. She explained that the tangle of more than 120 bilateral agreements and two dozen joint technical committees was “complex, opaque and very difficult to manage”, hence “the inability to adapt to a fast-changing political and economic context”. She explained that if one failed to make progress, one would move backwards and the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, has said recently that if Switzerland wants to take advantage of the full potential of the single market, then the bilateral treaty model is practically exhausted. (O.L./transl.fl)