Brussels, 19/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - At their sixth bilateral meeting in Brussels on 18 April the European Union and Switzerland failed to find a common way of tackling fraud and tobacco smuggling. The Swiss negotiators were faced with a firm EU delegation that insisted that Switzerland had to apply virtually all EU acquis across the board (money laundering, dual criminality, acceleration of procedures and information about bank accounts). Both sides left the meeting without setting any date for a future meeting on the issue of fraud. The leader of the Swiss delegation, Customs Director General Rudolf Dietrich, told reporters that he would be reporting back to the Swiss Federal Council, where the Swiss government would draw conclusions in terms of the impact of the breakdown on other areas of bilateral negotiations and more generally on Swiss policy in the field of judicial and administrative co-operation over taxation. This puts the EU in a difficult position since it was preparing to give the Commission new negotiating mandates over Schengen, asylum, services and broadcasting (see EUROPE of 17 April, p.10).
Dietrich criticised the EU for refusing to make any concessions, while Switzerland had taken measures to step up the fight against customs fraud and smuggling. Noting that it was not in Switzerland's interests to be a centre for smuggling and all the variations of fraud, his country would now consider how to tackle these problems multilaterally (rather than bilaterally through agreement with the EU). He outlined the offers Switzerland had made in the negotiations but which had been turned down by the EU, viz: on double criminality, Switzerland had agreed to make an effort and had drawn up a list of areas where double criminality applied. The EU again refused to give ground concerning tax evasion (for which one cannot be sentenced under Swiss law); money laundering. Dietrich said that Switzerland had only very recently agreed to add money laundering to the negotiations using the criteria set out in the UN Convention (whereby the act taken prior to the money laundering operations must itself be a crime); information on bank accounts. The EU was not prepared to grant any exemptions to the October 2001 protocol on judicial co-operation that enables accounts to be monitored without the account holder being notified, explained Dietrich, adding that Switzerland was prepared to consider the idea of monitoring accounts, but only for organised crime (and not simply for ordinary financial crime).