Council of States committee backs Bilateral III agreements

The Council of States' Foreign Affairs Committee (CPE-S) has completed its in-depth review of the Bilateral III package of agreements between Switzerland and the European Union. The work took several months and served to assess each of the agreements in the package in detail.

At the end of its work, a majority of the committee recommends voting in favour of the text. In the overall assessment, the vote was 9 in favour, 3 against and one abstention. This majority backs the stabilisation of relations between Bern and Brussels through the new package of agreements.

The file now goes to the full Council of States, which will discuss it during the autumn parliamentary session. The chamber representing the cantons is expected to reach a final decision at the end of the month, after the committee has already reviewed the more technical aspects.

The key points of contention

The parliamentary debate is expected to focus on a few key points of the package. The first concerns Switzerland's dynamic adoption of EU law. The second is the protection of Swiss wages under the new framework of relations with the European Union. The third is the introduction of a safeguard clause, to be triggered in the event of excessive immigration to Switzerland.

Considerable attention is also expected to go to the procedure for the popular vote on the treaties. On this point, views within the Council of States do not yet fully align. Some members consider the optional referendum, already provided for this type of international agreement, to be sufficient. Many members of the chamber instead call for a mandatory referendum, which also requires a majority of the cantons and is therefore harder to achieve than the optional one.

The choice between the two voting procedures is expected to take up a significant part of the debate in the Council of States, alongside the other open questions on the package of agreements with the European Union.