A visit from the awkward neighbours

It’s laughter all round as Swiss politicians come to Brussels.

Switzerland, surrounded as it is by countries that are part of the European Union, needs good relations with the EU far more than the EU needs good relations with Switzerland. This asymmetry was on display in Brussels on Tuesday (20 March) when senior Swiss politicians held awkward talks with the EU’s leadership. 

Switzerland has almost complete access to the EU’s internal market through a series of bilateral agreements. But the EU is getting impatient with Swiss cherry-picking and wants to put in place a framework for relations, with supranational institutions to oversee implementation of existing agreements and to adjudicate on disputes. That is anathema to the Swiss, who rejected membership of the European Economic Area in the 1990s and prefer the ad-hoc character of current arrangements.

That message was brought to Brussels this week by Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, Switzerland’s finance minister, who this year also serves as federal president, and Didier Burkhalter, foreign minister since January. Neither Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, or José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, seemed receptive.

They held equally awkward talks with Algirdas Šemeta, the European commissioner for taxation, and paid a courtesy visit to Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, who is an outspoken critic of bilateral tax deals between member states and Switzerland.

The ministers had to prolong their stay to attend memorial services for Belgian schoolchildren who died in a coach accident in the Swiss Alps last week.