Swiss and British busi­ness strengthen bi­lat­eral di­a­logue

It was a strong com­mit­ment to closer bi­lat­eral eco­nomic re­la­tions be­tween Switzer­land and the United King­dom: high-level busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tives from both coun­tries met on March 16 for the first meet­ing of the CH-UK Trade and In­vest­ment Coun­cil. Also in at­ten­dance were nu­mer­ous gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials from both coun­tries. This, to­gether with video mes­sages from Fed­eral Coun­cil­lor Guy Parmelin and Trade Min­is­ter Anne-Marie Trevelyan, un­der­lined the im­por­tance that both gov­ern­ments at­tach to this pri­vate sec­tor ini­tia­tive.

Focus on eco­nomic op­por­tu­ni­ties

The talks fo­cused pri­mar­ily on un­tapped op­por­tu­ni­ties in the fur­ther deep­en­ing of bi­lat­eral re­la­tions. At the same time, how­ever, at­ten­tion was also drawn to cur­rent chal­lenges in bi­lat­eral trade. In part, these have also arisen due to the frag­men­ta­tion of pan-Eu­ro­pean value chains as a re­sult of Brexit.

In ad­di­tion, the Swiss and British au­thor­i­ties pro­vided in­for­ma­tion on the sta­tus of talks on mod­ern­iz­ing the bi­lat­eral trade agree­ment, the on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions on a com­pre­hen­sive fi­nan­cial ser­vices agree­ment, and work on ser­vices mo­bil­ity. The pri­vate sec­tor rep­re­sen­ta­tives stressed the im­por­tance of this work and ex­pressed op­ti­mism that it would re­sult in the sus­tain­able re­moval of nu­mer­ous bar­ri­ers to trade and in­vest­ment.

Fur­ther­more, they also iden­ti­fied other areas where Swiss and British com­pa­nies would like to see greater bi­lat­eral co­op­er­a­tion - also in a Eu­ro­pean and global con­text. They men­tioned, for ex­am­ple, the areas of re­search and in­no­va­tion, dig­i­ti­za­tion, sus­tain­abil­ity, the de­vel­op­ment of in­ter­na­tional stan­dards and in­volve­ment in mul­ti­lat­eral or­ga­ni­za­tions.

Geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions call for stronger co­op­er­a­tion

In view of the con­flict in Ukraine, all busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tives from both sides ex­pressed their deep dis­may about the lat­est de­vel­op­ments. Sup­port for the sanc­tions im­posed by na­tional pol­icy mak­ers was re­it­er­ated. At the same time, how­ever, for the Swiss and British economies, this height­en­ing of geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions in Eu­rope makes cross-bor­der co­op­er­a­tion all the more im­por­tant.