Switzerland and the European Commission are closer now to an agreement on Swiss plans to restrict immigration of foreign workers to Switzerland, a restriction that the Swiss electorate voted for in a referendum in February 2014, while maintaining the country’s access to the internal market, said the presidents of the Swiss Confederation, Johann Schneider-Ammann, and the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, following their meeting on Monday 19 September.
Discussions between the two presidents was constructive and took place in a positive atmosphere, commented the Swiss president. Juncker said he was more optimistic after these latest talks than he was in recent weeks, with things, he said, “going in the right direction”. “We’ve made progress”, stated Juncker after a meeting that could very well have been the last. “That will not be the case.”
The Commission president said on Monday that he could accept a plan that would give hiring preference to local labour, so long as that is agreed by both Berne and the EU, Reuters reports. He said that he could agree to that compromise proposal, if it ensures that there will be no discrimination against EU citizens and complies with international obligations.
The compromise proposal was presented by the lower chamber of the Swiss parliament on 2 September and will be discussed again by the parliament’s National Council on Wednesday 21 September. Juncker stated once more on Monday that these discussions will result in a specific model for Switzerland, acknowledging that “we all have Great Britain in mind, since the issues are interlinked”. Brexit, he said, was “another element adding to the difficult issues we have to discuss with our Swiss friends”.
The two men will meet again in Brussels on 28 October. Thereafter it will be the Swiss Chamber of States (the cantons) that will begin discussion of the draft law in December. According to those close to the issue, the points to which the European Commission is paying particularly close attention relate to the current requirement on Swiss companies to inform the relevant employment office of vacancies, the EU not wishing any possibility of discrimination that would adversely affect European citizens already in Switzerland.
A further sensitive point relates to the joint committee and the role of the federal government in enforcement measures that it would be empowered to take were the first measures to prove ineffective. The EU wants to have an input within the joint committee on the compliance of these measures with the 2002 free movement agreement, something that is not provided for in the Swiss draft law.
The draft law may still change following the parliamentary procedure, in ways that may or may not be acceptable to the EU. A further link exists between this issue of the free movement of European workers in Switzerland and the institutional agreement that Berne and the EU have also been negotiating since 2014. Switzerland could possibly accept the idea of a political link between the two issues, but not a political link. The agreement under negotiation will in future deliver more consistent and effective application of agreements (existing and still to be reached) on market access. Currently EU-Swiss relations are based on a raft of some 20 major bilateral treaties and over 100 other agreements. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)