BREAKING: EU, Swiss hail ‘historic’ new deal resetting relations

The European Union and Switzerland announced Friday they had sealed a new set of agreements aimed at recalibrating relations between the two neighbours.

The deal, reached after years of sometimes difficult negotiations, has already been denounced by the powerful, hard-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP), and Swiss unions have also expressed concerns.

And it will almost certainly be put directly to Swiss voters in a referendum.

The agreement is a bid to stabilise ties between the Alpine nation and the surrounding EU bloc, currently tangled up in more than 120 separate agreements.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen travelled to the Swiss capital Bern to unveil the reset with Switzerland’s President Viola Amherd.

“This agreement between the EU and Switzerland is historic,” she said. “This marks the beginning of a long-lasting cooperation.

“For people in Switzerland and the EU this agreement is an excellent basis for many good years together… we are as close as we could possibly be.”

Amherd described the deal as a “milestone for the stabilisation and further development” of relations between the two countries.

“This is in the interests of Switzerland’s and the EU’s population, our economies, employees, consumers, students and researchers.”

The government was “convinced that the outcome of the negotiation is good and beneficial to both partners”, she added.

A ‘submission treaty’

Amherd acknowledged that the government’s green light was just the first step on the road to refreshing relations between Switzerland and its biggest trading partner.

After legal review and formal conclusion, “Switzerland, its parliament and voters will take the lead,” she said.

Under the country’s direct-democracy system, the public will likely have the final word in a referendum.

And the SVP, the country’s biggest party, is fiercely opposed to any rapprochement with the EU.

Earlier Friday, SVP lawmakers stood outside the parliament in Bern holding up candles in what they called a vigil “for our independence and democracy”.

They denounced what they called the “package of lies” in the “EU submission treaty”, saying Switzerland would be forced to pay hundreds of millions of francs to the “crisis-ridden EU”.

It argued that the government’s “logic is simply perverse: it is handing us Swiss over to the EU — and we are supposed to pay for it!”

SVP president Marcel Dettling said they were “fighting for the self-determination of the Swiss people”.

A sticking point in the talks had been Switzerland’s efforts to secure an exemption to the EU’s cherished free movement of people between countries.

Separate slices

Bern and Brussels have spent years working on simplifying and harmonising their ties.

Relations plunged when Switzerland suddenly slammed the door on the talks in 2021.

Negotiations tentatively resumed in March, and with the goal of getting a deal by the end of the year, the two sides met around 200 times.

Unlike previous attempts to seal an overarching framework agreement, the latest talks sought to update existing agreements and conclude new ones on issues such as electricity, health and food safety.

Fearing it could be tough to win over voters, Bern last week reportedly changed its strategy, cutting the package of agreements into separate “slices”, according to Swiss public broadcaster SRF.

Each slice could then be put to a referendum separately, in the hope that it will be easier to win support on each narrow set of issues than on a broad package.

The Swiss Trade Union Federation has already called for further negotiations, warning that the agreement as it currently stands risks hitting Swiss wages.

Unions have also voiced concern at the potential impacts on Switzerland’s rail and electricity sectors.

The Swiss business federation Economiesuisse supports an agreement.

It said a deal would “enable Switzerland to maintain the current conditions, allowing its economy to access the European market, and to develop them in important areas”.