Migration and Swiss EU Membership

Abstract

The free movement of persons is one of the lasting and extremely controversial issues in the debate whether Switzerland should take part in the European integration process in one way or another. It was one (if not the) reason for the rejection of the EEE-agreement in the voting of December 6, 1992. And again it has become the hottest issue in the parliamentary treatment of the bilateral agreement in the summer of 1999. In the foreground, the trade unions have emphasised their fears of a so labelled “social dumping” (meaning that EU-citizens would be willing to work for lower wages or to accept lower standards of protection and security issues in their work conditions). In the background, however, the prospect of a free movement of EU persons to Switzerland fuels the genuine fears of a small and wealthy population towards a much larger and less prosperous neighbourhood. It is feared that the removal of legal restrictions to migration would lead to mass immigration from the European Union to Switzerland. Both views result in an extremely powerful leftright alliance against the free movement of persons. Due to the fact that the freedom to move is a constitutional right in the understanding of the European Union it also leads to a rejection of a too far reaching Swiss integration into the EU.