Brussels, 08/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - As it announced in Brussels on 12 June at a meeting of the joint committee on the freedom of movement (see EUROPE 11099), the Swiss government announced on Monday 7 July that it had submitted a request to the EU for a revision of the agreement on the free movement of persons (known by its French acronym, ALCP). This agreement, which entered into force in 2002, is difficult to uphold as it stands due to the referendum of 9 February of this year, in which the Swiss asked their authorities to re-establish quotas on foreign workers, including Europeans, from February 2017.
“The implementation of the new constitutional provisions is (…) incompatible with the ALCP. Switzerland therefore waited for the presentation of the implementation plan (Ed: on 20 June) before formally submitting a request to the EU for this agreement to be revised. The director of the Office fédéral des migrations (ODM) made this request in writing to the head of the European delegation to the joint committee”, Berne stated in a press release (our translation).
As regards the concretisation of the demands made by the Swiss on 9 February, after the implementation plan, the federal department of justice and the police, “in collaboration with the federal department of foreign affairs (DFAE) and the federal department of the economy, training and research (DEFR), will draft a negotiation mandate by autumn 2014. This will be based firstly on the guidelines of the admission model and secondly, on an inventory of possible scenarios in terms of internal and external policy”, the press release goes on to explain. EUROPE will return to this. (SP)