The Swiss Federal Council has not yet taken a decision on Friday 30 November on negotiations with the EU on an institutional framework agreement, but has taken safeguard measures for the Swiss stock exchange, after the Commission threatened, in recent days, to deprive Bern of any financial equivalency as of 1 January 2019. The Federal Council has announced the introduction of a ruling enabling European companies to continue their investments in Switzerland as from 1 January 2019.
This new tension is linked to the fact that the EU is losing patience with Berne in the institutional negotiations that should facilitate relations between the two parties, currently structured around 120 bilateral agreements. Last December, the Commission had already decided to reduce to one year the equivalency it had until now granted on an unlimited basis (see EUROPE 11929).
Negotiations intensified in 2018 on this framework agreement, but stalled again in October, mainly on the aspect of measures to protect the Swiss labour market, which the Commission would like to see reduced to a minimum by moving closer to the standards of the Posted Workers Directive. The Federal Council was initially expected to decide on this agreement and possibly give its political endorsement on Friday 30 November, but a letter from Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, sent on 27 November to German MEP Markus Ferber (EPP), seemed to change the agenda.
The European Commissioner indicated in fact, in response to a question from the MEP on the state of relations with Switzerland and the financial subject, that at this stage the Commission was not in a position to renew this equivalency in favour of Berne. This would imply, if the threat were carried out, that the Commission would quietly allow the current equivalency to expire on 31 December 2018 and would not take a specific decision to renew it.
At press time, the Federal Council yet to officially communicate the content of its decisions. However, it is already clear that the Swiss leaders will return to the European issue on 7 December, when they should definitively decide whether or not they can accept the content of the negotiations conducted so far and the provisional terms of the agreement. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)