Swiss President Ignacio Cassis wants to “thaw” his country’s ties with the European Union by seeking a new set of bilateral agreements and believes his country needs to get closer to the bloc, he told the SonntagsZeitung newspaper.
According to Reuters, the multi-year talks on Switzerland’s closer connection to the EU single market collapsed last May, when the Swiss government abandoned a 2018 draft to establish closer ties with its largest trading partner.
Brussels has been pushing for a decade for a treaty to be placed at the top of a patchwork of bilateral agreements that would force the Swiss to gradually adopt changes based on single market rules. It would also provide a more effective way to resolve disputes.
Cassis, who is also foreign minister, said the Swiss government was now working on new talks with the EU.
“At the Federal Council, we are currently in the process of setting the framework for a possible package or agenda for talks,” he said in an interview with Sunday newspaper.
Cassis cited electricity and energy as possible issues for agreements, adding that there is a lot of “potential for co-operation in the fields of health, research, media or culture, through which we can deepen relations”.
EU-Switzerland economic relations are now governed by more than 100 bilateral agreements dating back to 1972.
These agreements remain in force, but will erode, threatening over time to disrupt or even jeopardize Switzerland’s de facto participation in the EU common market, which – unlike Britain, which abrupt exit from the block- Bern is eager to maintain.
Cassis, of the pro-Liberal Party, hoped that a new set of bilateral agreements could resolve dispute resolution issues and reach a compromise on wage protection.
He added that in a tripartite world of the United States, Russia-China and the EU, “the pressure on Switzerland to cultivate deeper relations with Europe will increase. Because the EU is closer to us economically, ideologically and socially.”
Source: Capital
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