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It’s official: Switzerland defies referendum and won’t impose EU immigration controls

The Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has denounced Switzerland’s “capitulation” on immigration as parliament confirms its ‘light’ solution to the February 2014 anti-immigration referendum.

Published: 16 December 2016 11:24 CET

It's official: Switzerland defies referendum and won't impose EU immigration controls

File photo: The Local

On Friday the two houses of parliament took a final vote on the subject, the detail of which was agreed earlier this week, confirming the country would not be imposing quotas on immigration from the EU as voted for by the public in the ‘against mass immigration’ referendum in 2014.

Instead, unwilling to upset the country’s relationship with the EU, MPs have agreed a ‘light’ solution that will see unemployed domestic workers given preference over EU nationals for jobs in Switzerland.

On Friday the Council of States – Switzerland’s upper house – voted in favour of the new law by 24 to 5, with 13 abstentions, reported news agency ATS.

The lower house followed with 98 votes to 67 and 33 abstentions.

The move was denounced by the SVP, which had backed the 2014 referendum and was strongly in favour of imposing quotas on immigration from the EU.

The ‘light’ solution is a capitulation to pressure from the EU and violates the Swiss constitution, ATS reported the SVP’s Adrian Amstutz as saying.

The party may now launch a new popular initiative calling for the country to end its bilateral agreement with the EU over the free movement of people, the cause of three years of debate and anguish in parliament.

Implementing the 2014 initiative to the letter would have contravened free movement, something the EU was not willing to accept. Switzerland would therefore have risked the EU pulling out of many other bilaterals between the two, affecting trade, scientific research and Swiss students studying abroad, among other things.

But diverging so far from a constitutionally-binding referendum provoked an outcry among many in politics and the Swiss press when the idea was first suggested.

It remains to be seen how the EU will respond to the Swiss decision.

If it feels that the ‘light’ solution does not contravene free movement, the two countries can move forward with their bilaterals intact.

But some in Brussels may feel that the Swiss changes to the job market could discriminate against EU nationals.

The Swiss decision should be keenly observed by Britain’s Brexit government, also tackling the issues of free movement and immigration as it negotiates a way forward outside the EU.

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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 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.