The recent visit to Brussels by the President of the Swiss Confederation, Guy Parmelin, in the hope of breaking the deadlock on the framework agreement negotiated between his country and the European Union, has brought to light the disagreements that persist between Bern and Brussels.
“One of the problems with this issue is that for a long time, we did not have the courage to name the differences that existed between Switzerland and the European Union,” reacted Ignazio Cassis, the Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs, in an interview with the newspaper Tribune de Genève.
The meeting between Guy Parmelin and Ursula von der Leyen ultimately only served to reiterate each other’s positions.
“The differences that remain between our positions are significant,” acknowledged Guy Parmelin during a press briefing at the Swiss mission in Brussels.
The President of the Swiss Confederation said he expected a balanced text that “the Federal Council can defend before Parliament, the cantons and the people”.
Switzerland has always maintained that it wants to consolidate and develop its bilateral relations with the European Union, he recalled. Nevertheless, the Swiss authorities assure that they will not sign the draft framework agreement without progress on the outstanding points, namely the protection of wages, state aid and the directive on European citizenship which broadens access to social benefits.
In recent months, the two sides’ chief negotiators Stephanie Riso (EU) and Livia Leu (Switzerland) have held intense discussions on these three points, Parmelin said, stressing that these discussions were “not easy”, but they were conducted with “a lot of commitment”.
“Switzerland has made concrete proposals. However, the expected progress has not been achieved,” he added. Brussels, for its part, says it has made proposals. Removing the three contentious points from the framework agreement and dealing with them separately is, however, “unacceptable,” declared Eric Mamer, the chief spokesperson for the European Commission, during his daily press briefing.
While saying he understood Switzerland’s concerns, he said that this was not a reason to stop negotiations. “Solutions can be found with goodwill. We remain available to continue negotiations.” He added: “Our door is always open.”
The next steps in the negotiations between Switzerland and the EU are now expected to be difficult. “We must analyse the outcome of this meeting, both on the Swiss and European sides,” the Swiss president said.
The main sticking points concern state aid, namely public subsidies to economic actors that the EU prohibits, unlike Switzerland, as well as measures imposed by the Swiss Confederation to support the free movement of people and the generous Swiss wage policy.
The European Commission does not look favourably on the Swiss labour market protection regime, considering that the accompanying measures are at odds with one of the fundamental principles of European construction, which is free movement. The eight-day rule, in particular, which requires that the missions of posted workers in Switzerland be announced in advance, does not go down well with Brussels.
Under pressure from the unions and a large part of the political class, the Swiss Federal Council, for its part, has made this a red line in the current negotiations: no change in the accompanying measures.
The institutional negotiations between Bern and Brussels are also stumbling over the issue of state aid applied in Switzerland, but prohibited by the EU.
Indeed, the European Commission has made the prohibition of state aid an important principle of EU competition law. Articles 107 to 109 of the European Treaty expressly state that all aid granted by public authorities to companies or types of production is to be prohibited, whether it is a direct grant, loan or tax advantage.
2024-09-20 04:57:30