As the UK keeps a long, long distance from the EU, Switzerland gets closer

Britain is not the only problem nation for the European Union as it worries and frets about how to deal with the Trump-Musk force-field arriving in Washington, writes Denis MacShane.

Switzerland is gripped by an unending EU debate.

Swiss political leaders are curious about whether the new Labour government, and the enormous majority of more than 500 MPs all nominally coming from parties that opposed the Tory led 2016 campaign to quit Europe, are going to start reconnecting with the rest of Europe.

The Swiss of course are far more integrated into Europe than the insular United Kingdom. The EU is Switzerland’s largest trading partner. Three of continental Europe’s languages – German, French and Italian – are official Swiss languages and Switzerland has had for decades a de facto open labour market.

Today 2.5 million foreign nationals live in Switzerland – about a fifth of whom was born in the country. That’s nearly a third of the population.

In some ways the politics of immigration in Switzerland mirrors that of Britain. Swiss employers know they need European labour. The Swiss national football team depends on immigrants from Kosovo and Albania and without German doctors and nurses from all over Europe the Swiss medical services would collapse.

But unlike British bosses who ran terrified of ethno-nationalist politicians and anti-European propagandists like Nigel Farage, Robert Jenrick, or Daniel Hannam, the Swiss bosses lobby hard and finance campaigns to defeat referendums that seek to close borders in the manner of the hard Brexit imposed on Britain in 2020 and so far not challenged by the Starmer government.

The Swiss have a long history of far-right exclusionary politics. The biggest branch of the Nazi party outside Germany in the 1930s was in Davos. The Swiss authorities asked Berlin to stamp the notorious “J” on the passports of German Jews in the 1930s so Jewish asylum seekers from Nazi persecution could be turned back at the frontier.

Like Britain in the 1950s and 1960s Switzerland encouraged mass immigration to do all the work in labour-hungry economies. Unlike Britain which granted citizenship to Windrush, Indian and Pakistani immigrants the Swiss tried to block their immigrants from becoming Swiss citizens in the fantasy belief their newly arrived working class would return home to live under dictators in Spain, Portugal or Greece.

Today anti-European politics pays off politically in Switzerland. A Swiss referendum in 1992 voted No narrowly to joining the European Economic Area. Bolstered by that anti-EU, anti-immigrant feeling the biggest party in the Swiss Parliament is the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) with 61 seats out of 200. In French the SVP is softened into the Union of the Democratic Centre (UDC).

The SVP is part of the new identity nationalist rights represented in all of Switzerland’s neighbours – France, Italy, Austria and Germany. Yet the paradox of what author John Lloyd calls “the New Right” is that Le Pen, Meloni, and German speaking rightists are not challenging the EU in any significant way. The hopes of anti-European rightists (and some on the nationalist left) in Britain that Europe would rise up to dismantle European partnership have proved forlorn.

In Switzerland, the SVP highest profile populist ideologue, Roger Köppel, a journalist has given up his parliamentary seat and is now devoted his communication. skills to promoting the AfD, the extreme right East German party which makes little secret of its nostalgia for aspects of the Third Reich.

Berne has accepted most of EU rules and in 16 subsequent referendums in Switzerland the pro-European position won out in all but three of them.

Brussels is fed up with endlessly negotiating hundreds of trade deals with Bern. However the EU likes the 1.39 billion Euros used to promote transport infrastructure in Poland the Swiss paid for.

The Swiss People’s Party, is firmly hostile to the EU. It got the most votes in the 2023 federal elections – 28% – but the parties who want a deal that keeps Switzerland part of the European family of nations include the Social Democrats (Labour’s sister party) on 18%, the Liberals on 14%, the Centre of 14% and the Green Liberals, and Green Party with a vote share under 10%.

So while the Swiss People’s Party is the biggest party in Parliament there is a clear majority of Swiss law-makers who don’t want to join isolated marginalised Britain as a EU-hostile democracy.

What the EU wants is couched in a wonderful jargon phrase – “dynamic alignment”. It means that the Swiss should accept to align their trade rules, safety norms, respect for ECJ rulings, and freedom of movement with the EU. Berne has already joined Schengen and the Swiss participate in the Horizon and Erasmus university programmes which Labour is still refusing to accept.

The current deal will probably be passed by the Swiss National Council -the equivalent of the House of Commons – but then be submitted to a referendum which is easily obtained by the political parties in Switzerland.

Much will depend on the treatment of Swiss workers. The EU remains at heart part of the Davos elite consensus system of running the world since the fall of Soviet communism 35 years ago.

Swiss employers like their British or American equivalents want to hire and fire at will the workers needed to deliver their profits. Despite the European Social Charter, the EU has not been able to offer enough support to European non-university educated workers. Hence the revolt against Emmanual Macron’s Davos liberal project which led to the anti-EU Marine Le Pen emerging with most seats in the National Assembly.

If the Swiss trade unions according to leaders like Adrian Wüthrich, who has served in the Swiss parliament and now runs one of the two main Swiss union confederations, Travail Suisse, “feel that the EU is simply imposing an ideological pro-boss model than they and the social democratic allies will vote No in any referendum.”

The National Councillor (MP) Barbara Schaffner confirms Wüthrich’s analysis. She speaks for the Green Liberal party, a pro-EU party but one that insists the EU must have a policy to help and support workers as well as bosses.

So while Brussels may feel Switzerland has been drawn closer and closer to the EU the EU Commissioners charged with negotiating a final-final EU-Swiss treaty before it goes to a referendum should pay attention unless the Swiss like the English in 2008 deliver a vote against Europe.

So where does this leave Britain? At a New Year annual gathering of British and Swiss MPs in the Swiss Alps there were only pro-Brexit Tory MPs, including the former Prime Minister, Liz Truss, who turned up. Not a single Labour MP was present. The Europe Minister, Stephen Doughty is respected in Berne for building good contacts with the Swiss government.

But Labour is not active in European political circles. Given the 200 plus Labour MPs without a government position of any sort perhaps it is time Labour as a party and as MPs started reconnecting with Europe.

Denis MacShane is the former minister for Europe and chaired the All Party Parliamentary Group of MPs on Switzerland.

Share this article: