Brussels, 17/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Sunday 16 February, the European Commission confirmed the threats that it had made to Switzerland shortly after the Swiss referendum on 9 February aiming to limit European immigration (see EUROPE 11019). The Commission has therefore suspended its negotiations with Switzerland on the Horizon 2020 research programme (a programme worth a total of €80 billion for 2014-2020) and on the Erasmus programme (€14.7 billion).
Last week, the Commission suspended discussions on a future electricity agreement and warned that the “yes” vote of 9 February could have other consequences to come on the research and Erasmus programmes.
The Commission's execution of these threats comes just after the announcement over the weekend that Switzerland would not sign the memorandum enlarging the free movement of European workers in Switzerland to citizens of Croatia. Switzerland's Minister for Justice Simonetta Sommaruga called Croatia's Minister for Foreign Affairs Vesna Pusic on Saturday 15 February to inform her that this extension could no longer take place.
The referendum result of 9 February, approved by 50.3%, is very clear and obliges the Swiss federal government to review any international treaty concerned by free movement, which is the case for the memorandum with Croatia (a memorandum which nevertheless provided for quotas for Croatia over a period of seven years, then total free movement after ten years). Bern was obliged to follow up on the result of the 9 February and had no other option than to suspend these talks with Croatia - which has sparked automatic reprisals from the Commission. This memorandum on Croatia had been initialled by the two parties but has not yet been signed. The negotiations on the Erasmus and Horizon 2020 programmes will not resume as long as Bern has not signed the memorandum on Croatia, said European Commission spokesperson, Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, on Monday 17 February.
The Commission's position consists both of penalising Bern and advocating the Council's adoption of the mandate on the future institutional agreement. Coreper (the committee of permanent representatives of the EU member states) decided, on 13 February, to postpone the adoption of this mandate, but the issue could return to the EU28 discussion table very quickly. This is a “technical postponement” and not a postponement “on content”, a source said on 14 February. The challenge of the future discussions with the Swiss authorities is to know how far the message of 9 February will be transposed. “If it is about fixing very large quotas of European workers, this will be alright, but if they are below what we currently have, this will pose a problem”. Another issue on which light needs to be shed is whether the quotas will be the same for all the member states or whether there will be differences. It is to these questions that the Swiss authorities need to give a swift response.
According to an opinion poll published in Switzerland's SonttagsBilck on Sunday 16 February, 74% of the people polled spoke out against Switzerland's revocation of the bilateral agreements with the EU, while 19% were in favour and 7% had no opinion.
A meeting is scheduled on Thursday 20 February between Yves Rossier, the Swiss secretary of state for foreign affairs, and David O'Sullivan, the director general of the European External Action Service (EEAS), in order to have an overview of the issues posed by the vote of 9 February and in order to speak about “solutions enabling Croatian citizens not to be discriminated against”, said a source. (SP/transl.fl)