The European Union is to show its determination to make no concessions to the UK on Brexit terms by telling Switzerland it will lose access to the single market if it goes ahead with plans to impose controls on the free movement of EU citizens.
The Swiss-EU talks, under way for two years but now needing a solution possibly within weeks, throws up the exact same issues that will be raised in the UK’s exit talks – the degree to which the UK must accept free movement of the EU’s citizens as a price for access to the single market. [...]
The Swiss only narrowly voted to restrict immigration in the original 2014 referendum, with 50.3% in favour, and have been in unfruitful talks to implement the measure with the EU ever since. The Swiss are far more dependent on the EU for markets than the EU is on Switzerland, making the Swiss negotiating hand relatively weak. An impasse on the immigration issue threatens hundreds of other EU-Swiss bilateral agreements, as well as the imposition of tariffs. [...]
The EU has previously shown its negotiating muscle by freezing research grants for Swiss universities worth hundreds of millions of euros and suspending the involvement of the Swiss in the Erasmus student exchange programme. The EU acted after the Swiss refused to sign a free labour market access deal signed by the EU in Croatia.
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