Brussels, 02/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - Meeting officially for the first time in Brussels on Monday 2 February, President of the Swiss Confederation Simonetta Sommaruga and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker held “positions very far apart” with regard to the response to be given to the Swiss referendum of 9 February 2014. The referendum obliged the Swiss government to propose quotas on foreign workers on Swiss soil by 2017.
“We were not able to bring our points of view closer”, which “does not mean that an agreement will not be possible later”, said Juncker, who is “not overly optimistic” about the result of the discussions. “We noted that our positions were far apart and that there was little margin for manoeuvre”, said Sommaruga.
The two presidents nevertheless agreed to discuss the issue more regularly and possibly in the format “of the highest political level” and not at the administrative level, Juncker stated, giving assurances that “we are only at the start of a process”.
This test meeting was intended to sound out relations between the two parties - with the Swiss government being due to present its legislative draft in February for implementing the 9 February referendum.
The majority of Swiss voters had asked their government in the referendum for a limit, through quotas, on the number of foreign and European workers coming to Switzerland. However, this request directly challenged the agreement on the free movement of European workers that has been in force between Bern and the EU since 2002, and that the referendum involves terminating.
Sympathetic listening wanted. On Monday 2 February, the Swiss party hoped in particular that the Commission would listen sympathetically. “We understand the EU's position on free movement but we ask to be able to sit around the table and talk”, says a source. The Barroso Commission had followed an official line that was rather intransigent and that last July rejected a request from Switzerland to renegotiate the free trade agreement. The Swiss authorities now want to sound out the Juncker Commission's mood, even if the British question and numerous challenges from British Prime Minister David Cameron to the principle of free movement do not facilitate the context, or leave the Commission with much margin for manoeuvre.
It is in February, (“very soon”, it is said, without a fixed date being given), that the Swiss authorities will adopt their draft on implementing the referendum result, as well as the mandate for negotiations to deal with the issue of the free movement agreement.
While the 9 February referendum included the call for quotas on foreign workers by February 2017, the draft that is soon to be presented “is not expected to contain a limit in precise figures”, says a source, and this is because “it can only be fixed on the basis of figures for the preceding year and we are only in 2015”. If no mediation can be found between the EU and Bern by 2017, the agreement on the free movement of people could be renounced by the EU, and owing to the “guillotine clause” a series of other bilateral agreements covering internal market sectors could also become null and void. (SP)