FOR the European Union’s high priesthood in Brussels, the right of people to live and work anywhere in Europe is sacred. But free movement is a worldlier concern for Franco Puffi, who runs Precicast, a high-tech metal foundry in Ticino, a Swiss canton next to the Italian border. Fully 90% of those who toil in its workshops are Italian, as are the engineers who design its moulds and the managers who seek new export markets for aerospace and biomedical components. Mr Puffi would like to employ more locals, but says the Swiss prefer banking and public-sector jobs. Northern Italians, by contrast, value industrial work and have the technical skills he needs. Their country’s economic woes make them “hungrier”. And there are a lot more of them.
For others, that is precisely the problem. “Ticino is confronted with Italy,” says Norman Gobbi of the Ticino League, a local party that backs immigration curbs. “And Italy is an example of the non-functioning of the EU.” Switzerland, a small, federal construct that protects its sovereignty furiously—it became a full UN member only in 2002—is in many respects a curiosity. Its relationship with the EU, governed by a…