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IMMIGRATION

Bankers worried about immigration accord

The electoral success of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) will make an initiative curbing immigration from the EU more difficult to implement in a way that is favourable to Switzerland’s economy, a leading Swiss banker says.

Published: 20 October 2015 20:09 CEST

Bankers worried about immigration accord

Swiss Bankers Association President Patrick Odier. Photo: Swiss Bankers Association

“The Swiss people decided in February 2014 for more restrained immigration,” Patrick Odier, president of the Swiss Bankers Association, said in an interview with daily newspaper Nordwestschweiz published on Tuesday.

“But for the banks, as for other branches of the domestic economy, it is important that we have access to the best qualified personnel as well as to foreign markets,” Odier said.

That is necessary for Swiss banks to be able to pursue their growth in Switzerland, maintain jobs abroad and contribute to Switzerland’s well-being, he said.

The SVP won the most seats in parliamentary elections on Sunday, electing 64 MPs to the 200-seat lower house of representatives in an election where immigration polled as the number one concern.

The populist party spearheaded the initiative approved by voters last year to limit immigration, although this flew in the face of the freedom of movement accord Bern has signed with the European Union.

The nationalist party has argued that it will be possible to renegotiate this agreement with Brussels but critics maintain that will put other bilateral agreements in jeopardy, including those that give Swiss businesses unfettered access to the EU market.

So far, the Swiss economy has maintained its strength in the face of such concerns and despite the relative strength of the franc against the euro.

The Swiss currency held firm following Sunday’s elections, suggesting that investors are not — in the short term — worried about the rise of the SVP.

But the banking industry remains concerned.

“We need a framework agreement with the the EU and exploratory discussions for a separate accord for financial services,” said Odier, a managing partner with Lombard Odier, the Geneva-based private bank.

However, without a solution to the SVP’s immigration initiative the EU will not discuss these issues, he said.

“It’s why we are asking the federal government to not wait any longer and to present proposals for the introduction of the initiative against mass immigration if still possible next January.”

The comments came as members of the Swiss parliament prepare to vote for a new seven-person government in several weeks.

The SVP, which currently has only one representative in the cabinet, is campaigning for two seats but other parties are demanding members who promise to be “collegial” rather than combative.

A difference of opinion on how to implement the immigration initiative is one of the wedge issues separating the SVP from the centre-right Liberals, who currently have two cabinet ministers in the government.

Other parties, such as the Socialists and the Christian Democrats, are steadfastly opposed to the SVP approach.

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With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced on Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.