By the thinnest of margins – 19,526 votes – Switzerland has voted by popular referendum this weekend to back immigration quotas on EU citizens. The vote, 50.3 to 49.7 per cent, will set the country on a collision course with the Union, jeopardising its continued free access to the single market, a quid pro quo for the free movement of workers provided for in Switzerland's 2002 accession to the Schengen free travel accord.
"This goes against the principle of free movement of persons between the EU and Switzerland," a European Commission statement insisted. "The EU will examine the implications of this initiative on EU-Swiss relations as a whole." The decision will certainly add to pressures the country is already facing from the international community over issues such as bank secrecy and the favourable tax rates some Swiss cantons offer multinationals.
And it would appear to suggest that Switzerland is turning back to its more insular, go-it-alone past. The irony is that, of European countries, it could be said most accurately to be a country of foreigners who account for over a quarter of its eight million population. They provide a vital skill resource that keeps companies such as food and beverage giant Nestlé, bank Credit Suisse, drugmakers Novartis and Roche, as well as major commodities dealers such as Glencore Xtrata and Louis Dreyfus Commodities going.
The strength of the Commission’s response is also a warning that the EU is unlikely to accept new curbs on internal migration from countries including the UK which have their own anti-immigrant parties akin to the right wing Swiss People’s Party and where EU-originated immigration is becoming a hot political issue. It comes on a day when new figures show that, contrary to popular myth, almost as many Britons live abroad in the EU (1.2 million) as EU citizens live in Britain (1.3million). And, as Social Affairs Commissioner Lásló Andor pointed out yesterday, the vast majority move to work, not to claim benefits.