16 October 2024

EURACTIV: EU not an ‘ à la carte menu’, members tell Switzerland

Switzerland wants a so-called safeguard clause on suspending free movement of people with the EU in certain circumstances. EU ministers rejected a push by non-member Switzerland to add a clause to bilateral agreements under negotiation that would allow it to limit immigration from the bloc.

The European Union and Switzerland want to seal an agreement to "stabilise and develop" their relations by updating and expanding a set of more than 120 agreements by the end of the year.

Relations have been strained since Bern -- without warning -- slammed the door on the negotiations with its main trading partner in 2021.

And while the talks tentatively resumed this year, Switzerland's efforts to secure an exemption to a central EU tenet -- the free movement of people between countries -- could make a deal difficult to reach.

"Europe is not an  à la carte menu," Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel said ahead of a meeting of EU Europe ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday.

"We have common rules for everyone," including Switzerland, he said.

His French counterpart Benjamin Haddad said his country backed "concluding a deal with Switzerland", but only if "the criteria of the single market and the European Union's four liberties" are respected.

Janos Boka, the European affairs minister in Hungary, which currently holds the European Council's rotating presidency, said there was "positive momentum" in the talks and solid efforts underway to "fulfil our mutual political commitment to conclude the negotiations by the end of the year".

Immigration wrangle

Switzerland has been part of the EU's Schengen open-borders area since 2008.

But the country wants a so-called safeguard clause on suspending free movement of people with the EU in certain circumstances, which could include, according to observers, high unemployment or a mass influx of European workers.

"That looks like a very steep mountain path, because it is a request that was not anticipated when the negotiations began," Rene Schwok, a political science professor at the University of Geneva, told AFP.

Schwok said that the hard-right Swiss People's Party (SVP), the country's largest, which is "totally against the free movement of people", was behind the initial safeguard clause push, but that broader support was growing....

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