Report: Swiss negotiator stepped down over EU talks impasse

State Secretary Livia Leu announces to journalists in Bern that she has resigned from her position as Switzerland’s top negotiator with the European Union to take up the post of ambassador to Germany, May 10, 2023. © Keystone / Peter Klaunzer

State Secretary Livia Leu resigned from her position as Switzerland’s top negotiator with the European Union as she saw no improvements in ongoing talks with Brussels, according to a Swiss newspaper report.

Leu, 62, has been in charge of talks with the EU since autumn 2020. Last week it was announced that she would serve as state secretary until the end of August and would then become Swiss ambassador to Germany at her own request. She said her departure was a “personal choice” and did not send a bad signal to Brussels. 

+ Livia Leu to step down as top Swiss negotiator with EU

But according to a reportExternal link in SonntagsZeitung, Leu left her post as negotiator with the EU as she saw “no chance of getting relations with the EU back on track without again making the concessions that brought down the institutional framework agreement three years ago”. 

This claim is based on a note SonntagsZeitung journalists have seen from talks in early May between officials from the federal authorities, employers and the cantons.

Those present at the meeting spoke of “sham negotiations” for any new talks with the EU planned for autumn, SonntagsZeitung said.

+ Swiss negotiator sees progress in exploratory talks with EU

In an interview with Swiss public radio, SRF, on Saturday, Swiss President Alain Berset downplayed Leu’s resignation.

“It’s not the end of the world,” heExternal link told SRF. “Institutions are always stronger than the people who embody them for a certain period.”

During her time as negotiator with the EU, Leu also saw the breakdown of negotiations on an institutional framework agreement with the EU in 2021, when Switzerland unilaterally walked away from talks. At the time the government cited a lack of agreement on salary protection, state aid rules, and the access of EU citizens to Swiss social security benefits.

+ What is the EU framework deal?

Since then, Leu and her team have been conducting exploratory talks with the EU to rebuild ties. At the end of March the government announced that the key parameters of a negotiating mandate would be drawn up by the end of June.

In recent months, EU officials have said publicly that they want to end the exploratory talks as soon as possible and start negotiations on an agreement overseeing future ties with Switzerland that will be concluded by summer 2024.

According to the SonntagsBlick, the current favourites to replace Leu are Alexandre Fasel, the current special Swiss representative for scientific diplomacy in Geneva, and Rita Adam, Switzerland’s ambassador to the EU.

+ Switzerland and the EU: close, but not too close

Switzerland and Brussels have been at odds over an agreement to consolidate relations following the Swiss government’s decision to abandon years of talks with the EU on an umbrella accord to complement the more than 120 bilateral agreements.

Last year Bern proposed a package for new talks that would be based on updating individual sectoral agreements rather than crafting an overarching treaty. The EU says it is open to this sectoral approach, but only “as long as problems are resolved everywhere”.

Switzerland sees the ‘package solution’ as an opportunity to regulate the future of the bilateral agreements sector by sector. But the EU wants Switzerland to commit on key institutional issues such as dispute settlement, state aid, wage protection and the free movement of people as it does not want Switzerland to forget about the concessions it made during the talks. Another sticking point is deciding which court should settle legal disputes that arise from Swiss-EU bilateral relations.