COPY LINK

IMMIGRATION

Swiss parliament reaches agreement on EU immigration

After nearly three years, the Swiss parliament has finally decided how to deal with the February 2014 ‘against mass immigration’ referendum, even if its solution bears little resemblance to the text of the initiative voted for by the public back then.

Published: 13 December 2016 09:16 CET

Swiss parliament reaches agreement on EU immigration

The Swiss parliament seems to have finally found an agreement. File photo: Peter Schneider/AFP

Following years of speculation and uncertainty, and several weeks of intense debate, on Monday parliament hammered out the detail of its ‘light’ solution, agreeing rules that will see unemployed domestic workers given preference over EU nationals for jobs in Switzerland.

The agreement is still subject to a final vote on Friday, however that is simply a formality, reported news agencies.

Back in February 2014 the Swiss people narrowly voted in favour of bringing in some form of limits on immigration from EU countries, a move that would have countered the EU’s free movement principle and jeopardised Switzerland’s many other bilaterals with the bloc.

The new rules agreed on Monday diverge hugely from the constitutionally-binding referendum, after the Swiss parliament decided – to outcry from some – that it was not willing to sacrifice its relationship with the EU.

Rather than imposing strict limits on EU immigration, parliament has agreed new rules on unemployment which should limit the impact of foreign workers on the domestic job market.

Employers will be obliged to advertise vacant positions to job centres and invite selected Swiss job seekers for interview. If they don’t, they will risk a 40,000 franc fine.

This obligation will only apply in professions, job sectors or regions where unemployment is above average.

However employers will not – as was suggested by the Council of States during the development of this new law – be obliged to justify why they refuse a Swiss candidate.

If these measures do not work, affected regions may propose further measures to parliament.

Europeans who lose their job within the first year will have six months to leave Switzerland.

The new law is a hugely watered down version of the ‘against mass immigration’ initiative voted for back in 2014, and parliament’s actions have angered some, including the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which backed the 2014 initiative.

However, despite what some see as the Swiss parliament’s “capitulation” on the issue, there is still no guarantee that the EU Commission will accept this Swiss national preference in the job market.

Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann will likely meet with EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in the coming weeks.

What’s more, there is still a chance this could be thrown up in the air again due to the RASA – or ‘break the deadlock’ – initiative, which would effectively give Swiss voters the chance to vote again on the issue.

While the Swiss government does not want to repeal the result of the 2014 referendum, it is currently developing a counter-project to RASA which could see Swiss people voting to essentially preserve EU bilaterals at all costs.

Member comments

Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.