Swiss vot­ers reaf­firm bi­lat­eral path with the Eu­ro­pean Union

Given the fact that the Agree­ment on the free move­ment of per­sons in­cludes a guil­lo­tine clause, the en­tire pack­age of Bi­lat­eral Agree­ments I would have been au­to­mat­i­cally can­celled if the ini­tia­tive had been adopted. This pack­age con­tains many other sig­nif­i­cant agree­ments be­tween Switzer­land and the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) cov­er­ing tech­ni­cal bar­ri­ers to trade, over­land trans­port, civil avi­a­tion, re­search, agri­cul­ture and pub­lic pro­cure­ment. For­tu­nately, a ter­mi­na­tion of this vital treaties could be avoided by today's vote.

In re­cent weeks and months, economiesu­isse has led a ded­i­cated na­tion­wide cam­paign to main­tain the bi­lat­eral path, along with a broad-based al­liance called strong+con­nected. This al­liance con­sists of nu­mer­ous po­lit­i­cal par­ties, eco­nomic as­so­ci­a­tions, trade unions and or­gan­i­sa­tions from sci­ence, cul­ture and civil so­ci­ety aim­ing to main­tain and strengthen the bi­lat­eral re­la­tion­ship be­tween Switzer­land and the EU. "Es­pe­cially in these dif­fi­cult times, it is an im­por­tant sig­nal for the econ­omy that a clear ma­jor­ity of Swiss vot­ers keep sup­port­ing the bi­lat­eral path", said Heinz Kar­rer after his final vot­ing cam­paign as pres­i­dent of economiesu­isse. Ac­cord­ing to Kar­rer, the next step will be to con­tinue Switzer­land's con­struc­tive ap­proach to­wards the EU. In order to be able to sub­mit the ne­go­ti­ated Agree­ment on in­sti­tu­tional ques­tions to the Swiss par­lia­ment for rat­i­fi­ca­tion, the Fed­eral Coun­cil must now quickly show how the open ques­tions con­cern­ing wage pro­tec­tion, state aid and the Cit­i­zens' Rights Di­rec­tive are to be re­solved