Mario Gattiker has a wide range of experience dealing with the EU
Keystone / Peter Klaunzer
Mario Gattiker, the retiring head of the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM), will now take over tasks in Switzerland’s dossier with the European Union. The government has asked him to continue the analysis of differences in regulations between Switzerland and the EU.
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Keystone-SDA/ts
The Federal Chancellery confirmed to the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA on Saturday corresponding reports in Tamedia newspapers and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
Relations between Switzerland and the EU deteriorated in May when the Swiss government unilaterally walked away from seven years of negotiations over an institutional framework agreement with Brussels.
The government discussed relations between Switzerland and the EU on Friday, which it will continue at a forthcoming meeting, the Federal Chancellery said. The results of the analysis of the differences between Switzerland’s and the EU’s regulations had been submitted to the government.
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These regulations formed one of the bases for the discussion conducted by the government. The results of the analysis will be communicated as soon as the government has concluded its discussion, the Federal Chancellery said.
Gattiker, 65, was appointed director of the Federal Office for Migration in 2012 and since 2015 has been State Secretary of the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM). He will hand over the reins to his successor, Christine Schraner Burgener, at the end of December. Gattiker has a wide range of experience with the EU: among other things he headed the Swiss delegation to the Swiss-EU Joint Committee on the implementation of the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons between 2009 and 2016.
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