A harm­ful es­ca­la­tion should be avoided

Today, the EU-Com­mis­sion has not taken a de­ci­sion to ex­tend the stock mar­ket equiv­a­lence to Switzer­land be­yond the end of June 2019. In view of the re­cent de­vel­op­ments in the ne­go­ti­a­tions for an in­sti­tu­tional frame­work agree­ment be­tween Switzer­land and the EU, this was to be ex­pected. This de­vel­op­ment is a se­vere set­back for the bi­lat­eral eco­nomic re­la­tions which have proven to be very ben­e­fi­cial for both sides. With­out an ex­ten­sion of the stock mar­ket equiv­a­lence by the EU, Switzer­land has an­nounced to enact a con­tin­gency mea­sure to pro­tect Swiss stock ex­change in­fra­struc­ture by 1st July 2019. The fed­eral or­di­nance will in­tro­duce a new Swiss recog­ni­tion oblig­a­tion for for­eign trad­ing venues that admit Swiss shares to trad­ing. In that case, EU trad­ing venues would not re­ceive this recog­ni­tion.

economiesu­isse de­plores the cur­rent de­vel­op­ments as they bear the risk of es­ca­lat­ing, po­lit­i­cally mo­ti­vated mea­sures be­tween the EU and Switzer­land. Such mea­sures would also make it more dif­fi­cult to start pro­ce­dures to rat­ify the in­sti­tu­tional frame­work agree­ment on the Swiss side.

In­stead of cre­at­ing fur­ther po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic dam­ages to the bi­lat­eral re­la­tion­ship in the com­ing weeks and months through es­ca­lat­ing mea­sures, economiesu­isse calls the Fed­eral Coun­cil and the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion to sta­bilise the bi­lat­eral busi­ness re­la­tions. economiesu­isse urges both sides to fur­ther clar­ify the re­main­ing open points about the in­sti­tu­tional agree­ment and to fi­nalise the dis­cus­sions as soon as pos­si­ble in order to start the rat­i­fi­ca­tion process.

For both sides, too much is po­lit­i­cally and eco­nom­i­cally at stake: As no other third coun­try, Switzer­land is ben­e­fit­ting from di­rect ac­cess to the EU Sin­gle Mar­ket. After the U.S.A. and China, our coun­try is the third most im­por­tant busi­ness part­ner of the EU.