Brussels, 27/04/2001 (Agence Europe) - The exploratory meeting held on Friday between the European Commission and Switzerland with a view to concluding a cooperation agreement for combating fraud did not give rise to any spectacular progress although, according to Commission sources, "the climate was far better than during the first meeting in Bern". The Swiss delegation declared after the meeting that it was ready to call for a negotiating brief from the Swiss Federal Council for the second half of the month of May, but did not indicate how long it thought negotiations would take. "It will not be necessary to specify in this mandate more than what is contained in the letter sent by Federal Councillor Joseph Deiss to the European Commission", said Rudolf Dietrich, Director General of the Swiss customs administration. It would be a question of extending existing cooperation mechanisms to professional smuggling and to fraud in the trade in goods, but the Commission representatives consider this insufficient. They hope that "other essential elements will be included in negotiations so that Switzerland does not continue to be a platform for the international criminal networks in the field of illegal activities which cause considerable financial harm to Community interests, such as trafficking in cigarettes and alcohol", but they said that, for the first time, they had felt on the part of the Swiss a readiness to talk.
The European Commission calls on Switzerland to: 1) include in agreements over fraud in the Community spending sectors, VAT and excise duties, and the laundering of the product of all illegal activities; 2) renounce the principle of "speciality" (by which information exchange between two administrations may only be used in the framework of the initial request), the principle of double incrimination and the suspensive effect in internal appeals. Switzeerland finds all these demands difficult to accept and so, for example, it rejects cooperation for money laundering not based on a criminal activity, whereas the Commission wants to extend cooperation to laundering in cases of tax evasion. The next meeting will take place end May.