Comment by FabCH
6 days ago
This is about Swiss - EU relations. Everyone understands that a yes vote means the Swiss equivalent of „exiting the EU“.
All Swiss-EU contracts contain a „Guillotine clause“ where if one contract is broken, all are immediately gone. The initiative explicitly requires breaking the freedom of movement contract, which immediately severs all other links to the EU.
This _is_ pure political agenda driven campaign using immigrants.
> All Swiss-EU contracts contain a „Guillotine clause“ where if one contract is broken, all are immediately gone. The initiative explicitly requires breaking the freedom of movement contract, which immediately severs all other links to the EU
Why does it need to be? Would freedom of permanent movement still be something Europeans would vote for today? Will the EU really hold hard on this line with Switzerland? (And does it make political sense to?)
> Would freedom of permanent movement still be something Europeans would vote for today?
My guess is yes.
It's one of the best things that the EU brings.
Support for EU within EU is growing since the war in Ukraine and has gone to overdrive since Trump 2.0. No current political party except for fringe parties in any EU state advocates for exiting the EU or ending the four freedoms. It’s reasonable to say that yes, EU citizens do approve of freedom of movement in EU. They probably do want to limit freedom of non-EU citizens though…
… which is exactly why the EU would terminate agreements with Switzerland if we start first. And why it would make political sense. They made that quite clear with the UK.
> Support for EU within EU is growing since the war in Ukraine
I believe you. But hard numbers?
> No current political party except for fringe parties in any EU state advocates for exiting the EU or ending the four freedoms
Eh, there seems to be massive demand for modifying either freedom of movement or the context around it.
> They made that quite clear with the UK
The UK invoked Article 50. That wouldn’t happen here.
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> Why does it need to be? Would freedom of permanent movement still be something Europeans would vote for today?
Freedom of movement for labor is absolutely critical to counterbalance the freedom of movement that capital has, otherwise it leads to mass exploitation of labor and rising levels of inequality, which leads to, well, the French approach to the bourgeois problem.
Of course it is political agenda driven, but at least from surface it does not have _fear mongering_ vibe, comparing for example with Sweden which did not conclude citizenship applications and applied back dated refusal. Also politician openly attribting all immigrants as source of increasing crime and lowering education levels.
10m is larger than current resident counts, so people moving in can decide now if they want to move with uncertainty. It is not what everyone would like, but it is more understandable that recent Swedish changes, for example.
This is not a vote for Switzerland to exit the EU...for obvious reasons. It is a vote to exit the Schengen.
"the swiss equivalent"
As OP explains, freedom of movement can't be stopped in isolation from the rest of the bilaterals.
(btw funnily Schengen is just about the border control, we're talking about freedom of movement which is a different thing, e.g. UK wasn't in Schengen but the freedom of movement applied to UK as well before brexit, tho I guess people use Schengen interchangeably)
Which immediately triggers the guillotine clause in all other bilateral treaties including movement of goods and services, Horizon, energy market etc.
„Exiting the EU“ is a perfectly adequate way to summarize it to a world audience that doesn’t care about the details.
I’m pretty sure you just pissed off a bunch of Swiss citizens claiming they are voting to exit the EU. It’s just insulting and insensitive.
Incidentally, when brexit was being voted, the only person I knew who thought it was a good thing was Swiss. They are just fiercely independent.
Even worse then - no more visa free travel, and no more international collaboration on crime. I must wonder, who would profit from these?