Bi­lat­eral III: An im­por­tant mile­stone is reached

The Fed­eral Coun­cil today an­nounced the con­clu­sion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions on the Bi­lat­eral Agree­ments III. With this pack­age, the Fed­eral Coun­cil is pur­su­ing the goal of con­sol­i­dat­ing and fur­ther de­vel­op­ing the bi­lat­eral ap­proach. The pack­age in­cludes, among other things, new Sin­gle Mar­ket as­so­ci­a­tion agree­ments in the areas of elec­tric­ity and food safety, a co­op­er­a­tion agree­ment in health, the up­dat­ing and fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of ex­ist­ing agree­ments, and

Switzer­land's par­tic­i­pa­tion in EU pro­grammes such as Hori­zon Eu­rope. economiesu­isse wel­comes the con­clu­sion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions. Monika Rühl, CEO of economiesu­isse, em­pha­sises: “The con­clu­sion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions is an im­por­tant mile­stone in se­cur­ing the bi­lat­eral agree­ments. Sta­ble re­la­tions and legal cer­tainty in our deal­ings with the EU, Switzer­land's most im­por­tant trad­ing part­ner, are of es­sen­tial im­por­tance for our econ­omy as a busi­ness lo­ca­tion.” economiesu­isse is pleased to note that ac­cord­ing to the Fed­eral Coun­cil, Switzer­land was able to achieve the ob­jec­tives set out in the ne­go­ti­a­tion man­date.

In ad­di­tion to se­cur­ing long-term mar­ket ac­cess in im­por­tant areas, the econ­omy par­tic­u­larly val­ues the strength­en­ing of sup­ply se­cu­rity through the con­clu­sion of an elec­tric­ity agree­ment and the par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Eu­ro­pean re­search pro­gramme Hori­zon Eu­rope. The con­clu­sion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions is an im­por­tant step in con­sol­i­dat­ing the bi­lat­eral ap­proach and en­sur­ing legally sound re­la­tions. As soon as the spe­cific word­ing of the agree­ment is avail­able, economiesu­isse will thor­oughly as­sess it and issue a de­tailed state­ment. The do­mes­tic im­ple­men­ta­tion is also pend­ing. For Swiss busi­ness, it is im­por­tant to main­tain a flex­i­ble labour mar­ket which must not be weak­ened.