We Have to Do Our Homework

Studio Schweizer Monat

The magazine Schweizer Monat invited me to a TV studio discussion with their editor of an article I previously wrote for them, discussing the state of EU-Switzerland Bilateral Relations and the extent to which the failure of the so-called framework agreement constitutes a changing point.

My Contributions

The main argument of the article was to point out that Switzerland has to decide whether it wants to be a part of the European market or not: the so-called Bilateral Treaties – static agreements that were never intended and built for the eternal governance of Swiss semi-integration in the EU market – clearly reached their limits and so has the idea that Switzerland can have it all. Switzerland can only fully reap the economic benefits of integration in the EU market if it incorporates applicable EU legislation and while some 20 years ago, when the Bilateral Treaties were initially negotiated, the applicable EU legislation was rather manageable, this is no longer the case today. The EU has changed and deepened massively since 1999 and with it the nature of EU-Swiss relations.
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I argue that Switzerland has to make up its mind – in the interest of economic prosperity and democracy: do we want to continue to benefit from EU achievements like the common market or the common migration and security policies? If yes, the prize is regulatory integration for structural reasons, because the EU is forced to maintain internal regulatory consistency. And are we then willing to accept that rules apply in Switzerland, which were decided without our say? If no, the focus should be on ways how to be included in the EU lawmaking process – or on accepting the economic prize non-integration clearly has.

As I am writing this five years later, I realise that we have not come very far since... The full discussion is available here.