Fur­ther deep­en­ing of CH-UK bi­lat­eral re­la­tions

The two busi­ness um­brella or­gan­i­sa­tions economiesu­isse and the Con­fed­er­a­tion of British In­dus­try (CBI) launched a Bi­lat­eral Trade and In­vest­ment Coun­cil at the end of 2021. For the first time, this ini­tia­tive from the pri­vate sec­tor will pro­vide an over­ar­ch­ing plat­form that will en­able high-level ex­changes be­tween pol­i­cy­mak­ers and the pri­vate sec­tor in both coun­tries across all rel­e­vant sec­tors and gov­ern­ment de­part­ments on a per­ma­nent basis. Within the frame­work of the Trade and In­vest­ment Coun­cil, cur­rent chal­lenges in bi­lat­eral trade will be dis­cussed to­gether, op­por­tu­ni­ties in the fur­ther deep­en­ing of re­la­tions will be iden­ti­fied and im­por­tant eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal top­ics for the fu­ture will be ex­plored as well. ‘Switzer­land and the United King­dom are ideal eco­nomic part­ners in many areas. This is also true for economiesu­isse and the CBI. The new Trade and In­vest­ment Coun­cil will help politi­cians and busi­ness to make even bet­ter use of the cur­rent mo­men­tum in bi­lat­eral re­la­tions for both sides’, ex­plains Christoph Maeder, Pres­i­dent of economiesu­isse. Lord Karan Bil­imo­ria, Pres­i­dent of the CBI adds: ‘We share many in­ter­ests with our Swiss part­ners, rang­ing from tech­nol­ogy adop­tion, via greater re­search, to sus­tain­abil­ity. So I am hope­ful that we can bol­ster ex­ist­ing arrange­ments for the ben­e­fit of com­mu­ni­ties – and com­pet­i­tive­ness – in both coun­tries.’

The UK is Switzer­land’s third most im­por­tant eco­nomic part­ner world­wide after the EU-27 and the USA. Con­se­quently, Brexit has also had a no­tice­able im­pact on the cross-bor­der eco­nomic re­la­tions of Swiss com­pa­nies. In the mean­time, how­ever, bi­lat­eral re­la­tions be­tween Switzer­land and the UK have been suc­cess­fully placed on a sta­ble con­trac­tual basis. Nu­mer­ous im­ple­men­ta­tion prob­lems have been solved with the close in­volve­ment of pol­i­tics and busi­ness. It is now all the more im­por­tant to make the best pos­si­ble use of ex­ist­ing and new po­ten­tial for po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic co­op­er­a­tion. With re­gard to a fur­ther deep­en­ing of bi­lat­eral eco­nomic re­la­tions, economiesu­isse sees the im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ties as being, in par­tic­u­lar, the early con­clu­sion of ne­go­ti­a­tions on a com­pre­hen­sive fi­nan­cial ser­vices agree­ment and the swift ex­pan­sion of the bi­lat­eral trade agree­ment. At the same time, co­op­er­a­tion should also be ex­panded, par­tic­u­larly in the areas of re­search, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and sus­tain­abil­ity. This is ex­pected to have pos­i­tive ef­fects on the com­pet­i­tive­ness of both coun­tries. It is also an op­por­tu­nity for Switzer­land and the United King­dom to po­si­tion them­selves more strongly on im­por­tant top­ics of Eu­ro­pean or global sig­nif­i­cance.

Learn more about this in our lat­est dossier­poli­tik.

Con­fed­er­a­tion of British In­dus­try CBI

Across the UK, the CBI speaks on be­half of 190,000 busi­nesses of all sizes and sec­tors. The CBI’s cor­po­rate mem­bers to­gether em­ploy nearly 7 mil­lion peo­ple, about one third of pri­vate sec­tor-em­ploy­ees. With of­fices in the UK as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Brus­sels, Wash­ing­ton, Bei­jing and Delhi, the CBI com­mu­ni­cates the British busi­ness voice around the world.

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