The perfidious Albion takes its chestnuts out of the fire and tries to sacrifice Willhelm Tell to the European Moloch

by Remy Delalande,* Switzerland

(19 April 2023) The “British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce” organized a simply absurd debate on 20 March 2023 in Bern with the EU Ambassador to Switzerland, Petros Mavromichalis, with the aim of getting Switzerland to submit to the judges of the “European Court of Justice” (ECJ) and finally overcome its dithering over the supremacy of European law.

But everything had started so well. The British Chamber of Commerce had agreed to host the EU ambassador to Switzerland at the offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Bern, and one could have expected an interesting triangular debate from a British point of view on this odd three-way partnership, since both the United Kingdom and Switzerland seem to be united by the same rejection of the institutional domination of the European Union, and endowed with the same Protestant mercantilism, at the antipodes of a European Union which is in many respects anti-democratic and centralist.

Since the Brexit vote a few years ago, Switzerland thought it had found a strong ally to oppose the EU’s regulatory diktats and assert its independence once again.

However, for careful observers, it is clear that Switzerland has been moving insidiously closer to the European institutions through successive agreements, while the United Kingdom has chosen to distance itself from them. Alluding in this respect to a succession of steps towards the European Union, Switzerland is now at the top of the staircase of European integration while the United Kingdom is rather at the bottom.

One might have expected that the debate on the prospects for European relations would allow a comparison between the two proud and courageous independent systems of Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and also take stock of post-Brexit British-Swiss relations. But alas, no!

Instead of this much-needed debate, the event did not fulfil these legitimate expectations in the slightest; on the contrary, a downright undoing of Switzerland was into play by the British. After all, far from being two brother countries united by a strong will for independence, they are above all competitors in the financial sector and in the trade of raw materials.

The event was thus curiously transformed into a kind of preposterous mass with Swiss and British groupies praising the words of a pompous and self-righteous European ambassador, pretending not to understand Switzerland’s resistance to adhere to a binding framework agreement that will automatically subject Swiss law to the European Court of Justice (CJEU).

With regard to common values, the EU ambassador explained that Switzerland could not gain access to the European market (although it is an excellent customer and supplier) without also biting the bullet of a political union with the EU.

While a British embassy representative hidden in the audience was not even asked to speak about the benefits of Brexit during the panel discussion, the European ambassador coldly described the EU’s double standards vis-à-vis third countries. Thus, the UK, some 30 kilometres from the European continent and open to the seas, would not be obliged – unlike Switzerland – to fully embrace the EU’s political and economic agenda. It is therefore easy to understand why the UK, anxious to preserve its room for manoeuvre in the forthcoming conclusion of a European free trade agreement, does not hesitate for a second to throw Switzerland under the bus in order to please Brussels and guarantee its chances of success.

The audience itself was fully committed to European integration, with everyone lamenting the Swiss government’s lack of courage in submitting to the European regulatory framework, and even wishing that the Swiss people should vote again to finally give them the chance to change their minds and abandon their shocking and retrograde conservatism.

The crowning glory of obsequiousness was shared by the Green mayor of Bern, for whom foreign judges are infinitely more respectable and desirable than Swiss judges with suspicious connections, but also by a former state secretary of SECO [State Secretariat for Economic Affairs], who directly recommended to the European ambassador to say “no” to the Federal Council’s manoeuvring.

In their eyes, more communication tools should be used to overcome local resistance to an institutional rapprochement with the EU, even though Switzerland enjoys a privileged economic situation with lower inflation than in other European countries thanks to a strong Swiss franc.

It is also understandable that the threat of a referendum frightens the Federal Council so much that it renounced the institutional framework agreement last year to the surprise of the EU ambassador.

He pointed to Austria and Norway, which despite their EU accession do not understand Switzerland’s strange hesitation to go ahead. A sign that the Federal Council is walking on thin ice was the invitation of the EU Vice-President by the University of Fribourg in December last year, which was met with little welcome in Bern, as it was feared that it could skid outside of a carefully delineated narrative.

But despite a benevolent outward impression, the ambassador was implacable. Switzerland must submit to European law, he said. Without a clear submission to the ECJ by Switzerland, he said, there will be no updates to existing agreements nor any future developments, for instance in the field of the electricity market (where Germany’s dominance in renewable energies and the linking of the electricity price to the gas price is seen to have had a disastrous result in Europe), in public health food safety (no joke!), and in medical technology. Switzerland has been warned and will not be able to rely on the perfidious Albion1 already betraying it. The eighth round of Swiss negotiations took place in Brussels and should be concluded next year.

Finally, to conclude on the blissful atmosphere that reigned in the audience yesterday regarding Europe’s destiny, the ambassador delighted all the participants by saying that Putin had done a great service to Europe, which was now united around common values and of which the United States was the most important partner politically and economically.

By 2030, he predicts, the EU will have expanded “in breadth and depth”. The foreseeable disagreements between the new member states should lead to a “democratic” reform in which the mandatory unanimity for decisions is to be replaced by a simple majority. Not something to dream about…

* Remy Delalande has been working as a political scientist for 20 years, first as a journalist in Geneva for a trade publication, then for the Foreign Office in Bern, where he covered a wide range of international and national regulations. Remy Delalande has also worked over 10 years as an elected politician in a local parliament on the shores of Lake Geneva. Since then, he focuses on local public policy issues and organizes expert conferences for banking professionals, as well as foreign delegations, on public affairs and regulations. (eventspro.ch)

1 “Albion” is an ancient name for Great Britain. In the 18th century, the French added the adjective “perfidious”. Not without reason, as the British captured 300 French merchant ships at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War without declaring war.