Re­lease of the Swiss co­he­sion con­tri­bu­tion - a step in the right di­rec­tion

Swiss busi­ness is pleased to note that the two cham­bers of Swiss par­lia­ment have re­leased the sec­ond co­he­sion con­tri­bu­tion of 1.3 bil­lion Swiss francs (1.2 bil­lion euros) with­out any fur­ther con­di­tions. Al­ready in 2019, Par­lia­ment had ap­proved the co­he­sion con­tri­bu­tion but made the pay­ment con­di­tional on the EU re­frain­ing from dis­crim­i­na­tory mea­sures, such as the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion of equiv­a­lence of the Swiss stock ex­change reg­u­la­tion. After the uni­lat­eral break­down of the treaty ne­go­ti­a­tions on an in­sti­tu­tional frame­work with the EU, the Swiss gov­ern­ment wanted to smooth the wa­ters. It there­fore pro­posed to par­lia­ment that the co­he­sion con­tri­bu­tion be re­leased with­out con­di­tions. On its last day of ses­sion, the Swiss Par­lia­ment has com­plied with this wish.

The pro­jects fi­nanced by Switzer­land and man­aged in co­op­er­a­tion with the ben­e­fi­ciary coun­tries are to flow pri­mar­ily into vo­ca­tional ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing, where Switzer­land can con­tribute ad­di­tion­ally through its pro­found ex­per­tise. The high qual­ity of Swiss vo­ca­tional ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing was demon­strated at the Eu­ro­pean Skills Cham­pi­onships in Graz last week. In 14 of 16 com­pe­ti­tions, where young Swiss pro­fes­sion­als par­tic­i­pated, they were among the top three, and Swiss par­tic­i­pants won gold in six of them. In ad­di­tion, the sec­ond co­he­sion con­tri­bu­tion will sup­port pro­jects in EU mem­ber states par­tic­u­larly af­fected by mi­gra­tion. Switzer­land ben­e­fits from this en­gage­ment by im­prov­ing mi­gra­tion man­age­ment in Eu­rope.

How­ever, the re­lease of the co­he­sion funds is also a sig­nal from Switzer­land to the EU to swiftly nor­malise re­la­tions, which have been clouded by the break­down of ne­go­ti­a­tions in May of this year. The busi­ness com­mu­nity now ex­pects ne­go­ti­a­tions for Switzer­land's as­so­ci­a­tion to Hori­zon Eu­rope to be im­mi­nent.

In ad­di­tion, Swiss Par­lia­ment is ask­ing the Fed­eral Coun­cil to pre­sent a fund­ing mes­sage for Switzer­land's par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Eu­ro­pean stu­dent ex­change pro­gramme Eras­mus+ in the com­ing win­ter ses­sion. This de­mand is sup­ported in prin­ci­ple by the busi­ness com­mu­nity be­cause it al­lows Swiss stu­dents to broaden their knowl­edge hori­zons and of­fers them an in­ter­na­tional per­spec­tive.