EU, Switzerland clear way for cooperation deal

The EU and Switzerland said Thursday they had resolved differences sparked by a bitter dispute over Swiss immigration curbs and now expected to reach a full cooperation accord by the end of the year.

“Everything that was blocked can now be negotiated,” European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker said after talks in Brussels with Doris Leuthard, president of the Swiss Confederation.

“We will work intensively to complete the framework agreement before year’s end and solve all the controversial questions,” Juncker said.

Key trading partners and close political allies, the EU and Switzerland fell out after a 2014 Swiss referendum called for immigration restrictions, a move Brussels saw as violating the core EU principle of freedom of movement.

Switzerland is not an EU member state but under agreements granting it market access, it must comply with EU legislation in many domains, not least on freedom of movement.

The vote left Switzerland’s extensive EU trade and other agreements in limbo — including talks on an overarching “framework accord” that would bring all the other deals together — as Bern struggled to find a compromise to satisfy anti-immigrant groups at home and maintain access to its biggest market.

At the same time, the issue got caught up in Britain’s Brexit vote, which was driven at least in part by anti-immigrant sentiment, with talk that Britain could one day seek a Swiss-type deal after it leaves the EU.

With the Brexit talks getting underway, Juncker stressed the importance of “not mixing up the negotiations with Great Britain and the negotiations with Switzerland. These are two completely different procedures.”

For her part, Leuthard said she and Juncker had agreed “that the technical talks in all areas will be resumed,” citing specifically dispute settlement procedures, which involves the role of the EU’s top court, and state aid.

There were still some sticking points but “we want to solve them,” she added.

In December, the Swiss federal parliament approved legislation which dropped the original idea of quotas on EU immigrants in favour of employers having first to see if locals could meet their job needs.

If not, then they could proceed to take on EU nationals, a move Brussels welcomed at the time as avoiding quotas and meeting most of its concerns.