Anywhose; Passed by 50.3% Switzerland has decided to tear up the bilateral free movement treaty it has with the EU and impose quotas for EU immigrants (there are already non EU quotas). The measure, which doesn’t specify how high those quotas should be, passed by fewer than 20,000 ballots in a national vote yesterday (Sunday). The government has three years to impose new rules, which will primarily affect workers from the EU, many of them highly qualified (like me FFS!).
To be fair to the Swiss, (and while there is definitely a fair bit of “well we just hate people with a sun tan”) I get the impression that the border cantons, Ticino/ Schaffhausen etc are a bit fed up with the watchmakers bussing Germans and Italians across the border daily for what are poor Swiss wages but quite good Italian or German wages. Of course the French bit is all for this because it has sour grapes that those cantons generally always got a kicking from Bern and were only grudgingly let into the Confederation in the first place. As such they don’t like the rich German parts and their imported smart people that keep them rich.
It will be interesting to see how the EU responds to this. By interesting, I mean, how dickishly. The consensus being that the EU might take the chance to be difficult, to try to show that “leaving” the EU (even if you are not really in it at all) is a bad idea, especially when you have no ports and all your exports have to go across the border into the EU (unless you export to both of the permanent residents of Liechtenstein I guess).
Possibly time for the UK, Luxembourg, Austria, Switzerland and the Nordics to actually put their heads together for once. Since they all have the same complaints against Germany and France.
