Ex-EU negotiator calls on Switzerland to stop dragging feet

Swiss-EU relations continue to hang in the balance. Keystone / Martin Ruetschi

A former European Union chief negotiator says Switzerland must change strategy if it wants to retain favourable access to the EU.

Christian Leffler spent five years, between 2015 and 2020, thrashing out the terms of bilateral deals with Switzerland. Now those arrangements hang in the balance after Switzerland stopped talks on establishing a new set of framework conditions for future bilateral ties.

Leffler told the SonntagsBlick newspaper that the ball now lies in Switzerland’s court. “What Brussels expects are concrete proposals from Bern. If the Federal Council [Swiss government] does not want the framework agreement, what does it want? Switzerland has not yet given an answer to this question,” he saidExternal link.

“Nobody in Brussels is in a hurry when it comes to the Switzerland dossier,” he added. “I don’t think the EU will change its position.”

The future of Swiss-EU relations has hit deadlock since framework talks ended in May. Visits to Brussels by Swiss foreign minister Ignazio Cassis, and more recently a delegation of Swiss parliamentarians, have yielded no further progress.

The EU issue has generated deep divisions within Switzerland, but Iffler urged the Alpine state to spend more time understanding the position of Brussels.

“If Switzerland wants to pick out individual agreements that are solely in their interests, that will not work,” the Swede said. “Access to the internal market is not an à la carte menu; it is more about finding common interests.”

“This is something that is often forgotten in the political debate in Switzerland: it is Switzerland that wants access to the EU internal market. If you want to play in a club – even partially – you have to accept its rules.”