Switzerland agrees to EU jobs access

THE Swiss agreed to continue the policy of giving EU citizens free access to jobs in their country and to extend it to Bulgaria and Romania, despite recession and fear of an influx of foreigners.

The hard fought campaign in which the business community alone spent about €6 million, resulted in a higher than average turnout of almost 51% of voters, with 59.6% voting in favour.

This was higher than the previous referendum four years ago on extending the free movement to the then 10 new EU members, and was described as a miracle by Dr Urs Rellstab, deputy director of Economie Swiss, the country’s main business organisation.

“The outcome was unpredictable, especially at this time when the economy is an absolute disaster,” he said. But with Switzerland earning one in three Swiss francs in the EU and dependent on foreigners for more than one in five of its workers, the last thing the country needed was to be isolated.

Those supporting a yes vote — the big political parties, trade unions and employers — succeeded in convincing people that keeping with the current agreement was less risky than changing it by voting no, he said.

Ida Glanzmann Hunkeler, a member of the Federal national council, from a village of 1,500 people agreed. “Almost 52% of them voted yes because they are mainly farmers who need their Polish workers more than they fear foreigners,” she said.

Just four of the 26 cantons rejected the proposal that would have seen the end of seven other agreements with the EU on trade, labour and transport. The biggest no vote was in the Italian-speaking region of Ticino where it was 60%.

For the country’s biggest party, the populist Swiss People’s Party, yesterday was a bad day as despite the huge sums of money pumped into the campaign by their billionaire leader Christoph Blocher and their attention grabbing racist posters they lost the vote, and a Federal parliament seat in a by-election.

But one of their senior members, Adrien Amstutz, was adamant the decision would return to haunt the Swiss electorate. “The real test will be in a few years time when full free movement applies,” he warned.

Yesterday’s vote also opens the way for the next phase in Switzerland’s relationship with the EU as their foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey travels to Brussels this week to discuss new structures that would allow the Swiss participate in discussions on legislation they intend to adopt, though they would not have a vote.