Bern dishes out more permits for non-EU workers

Switzerland will be able to recruit more non-EU specialist workers next year after the Swiss government agreed to increase the number of work permits for such people.

Published: 13 October 2016 10:09 CEST

Bern dishes out more permits for non-EU workers

File photo: The Local

In 2017 there will be 7,500 B and L permits available to non-EU workers, 1,000 more than this year, news agencies reported. However that’s still 1,000 fewer than in 2014.

The increase will come as a relief for cantons that rely on specialist foreign workers such as Geneva, which ran out of permits in March.

In August Geneva cantonal authorities wrote to justice minister Simonetta Sommaruga to say they were extremely worried they could no longer offer the permit to “highly qualified non-European specialists”.

In 2014 the government allowed a total of 8,500 permits (B and L) for non-EU workers, but this was reduced to 6,500 in 2015, following the acceptance of the February 2014 anti-immigration initiative.

In 2015 Geneva was able to top up its cantonal quota with unused permits from 2014, which were held in a federal reserve. But this year both its own quota and the federal reserve were used up by August.

Geneva and other Swiss cities that have a high number of international companies feared the situation could make those employers think twice about remaining in the country.

Economics minister and Swiss president Johann Schneider-Ammann joined with the cantons in pushing for a return to 2014’s level of permits, feeling it would help the economy by creating jobs, said news agencies.

Foreign specialists in certain areas – such as pharmaceutical research and IT – are urgently required, feel the cantons.

However the Federal Council felt an extra 1,000 would be enough, with a further 1,000 to be held in a federal reserve.

Though the situation doesn’t affect EU workers, who can currently be recruited by Swiss companies without restriction, it could be a sign of things to come should the country impose some form of quotas next February in accordance with its implementation of the 2014 anti-immigration initiative.

The Swiss parliament is currently favouring a ‘light’ solution which would see the country favour native workers over EU immigrants in certain sectors or regions only if immigration becomes a particular problem.

But according to a leaked document received by Swiss broadcaster SRF, the EU has “serious reservations” about the legality of the Swiss solution, reported 20 Minutes.

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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.