EU, Switzerland cite progress, but no deal on migrant curbs

The EU and close partner Switzerland said Monday they had made progress but reached no agreement over Swiss curbs on EU migrants which violate the bloc’s free movement rules.

Switzerland narrowly voted for the curbs in early 2014 but the issue is newly topical as Europe faces its worst refugee crisis since World War II and Britain seeks migrant restrictions of its own to stay in the bloc.

Swiss Federal President Simonetta Sommaruga said after talks in Brussels with European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker that both sides wanted an accord but it was easier said than done.

“We have cleared the ground but we have no solution … there is still a difficult way to go and a lot of work to be done. We might succeed, we might not,” Sommaruga told reporters.

Juncker said it was in the interests of both sides to find agreement.

“We hope that by February we will be able to set out what progress has been made,” he said. “We are confident of reaching an agreement.”

The Swiss vote in February 2014 jeopardised years of close ties with the 28-nation European Union which is founded on the core principle of free movement for all its citizens.

Switzerland is not an EU member state but it does belong to Schengen, Europe’s passport-free zone which has come under huge pressure as the migrant crisis has deepened this year.

In February, the Swiss government presented legislation to try and reconcile voters’ wishes with EU rules by allowing in migrants under specific exceptions to some of the restrictions.

Some 80,000 migrants, most from the EU, have settled in Switzerland annually and around a quarter of its eight million people are foreign nationals.