Election will redefine Switzerland’s view of the Union

Date: 19/10/1995

By Manfred Rist

THE paramount challenge facing the new Swiss parliament, which will be elected this weekend, will be to determine the country's relationship with the European Union.

Its task may not be made any easier by the mixed signals which voters are expected to send. After the electorate rejected the European Economic Area (EEA) agreement in 1992, Switzerland remains the only member of the European Free Trade Association not in the EEA.

It is also probably the only country in Europe not to have redefined its relationship with the Union in recent years, although the EU membership application lodged in 1992 still lies with the European Commission. True, bilateral negotiations are taking place on tricky issues such as the free movement of people, improved access of heavy lorries into the country and liberalisation of agricultural trade. But a second referendum on entering the EEA is remote and the idea that a fixed duration (perhaps five years) should be given to the EEA is gaining ground amongst politicians.

Opinion polls suggest that gains will be made by both the pro-EU Social Democrats (SP) in the centre-right coalition and anti-EU factions in the three other government parties. On the right, the most likely advances are expected to be made by industrialist Christoph Blocher's populist Zurich wing of the Swiss People's Party (SVP).

Blocher has introduced a vigorous campaigning style into the traditional government-by-consensus world of Swiss politics. SVP advertisements depict the EU as a giant threatening to flood the country with foreigners, siphon off its wealth and end its referendum system of direct democracy.

This aggressive approach with its nationalistic overtones threatens to introduce a dividing line between the SVP and other right of centre parties wishing to open up to the Union.

But most pro-EU leaning parties prefer to keep relations with the Union low key for fear that support for integration will lose rather than win votes. As a result, Switzerland is in a position found elsewhere in the EU where Euro-sceptics treat the Union as a punchbag in a bid to win popular support while the rest of the political spectrum remains silent.

But given the high rate of abstentions - only 46&percent; voted at the last elections in 1991 - it is possible that any shift towards an isolationist, xenophobic right-wing stance may be contained, encouraging pro-EU voices to end their silence.

Either way, the 200 members of the parliament's lower house and the 46 representatives of the upper chamber who will be elected later this month will be under pressure to find a way out of the current maze of Euro-confusion. If they fail to do so, observers fear the public may take politics into its own hands, increasing extreme demands such as limiting the number of foreign residents.

Despite the election, the government comprising seven ministers from four parties will remain unchanged. In the past month, parliament's approval of SP Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger has shifted the balance in the government towards support for EU membership and away from a form of loose association between Switzerland and the Union.

According to Claude Longchamp, one of the country's leading political analysts: “We will have two opposing trends - a slight increase in anti-EU sentiment in parliament through the elections, but in the government the first majority in favour of EU membership.”

Manfred Rist is the EU correspondent for Neue Zurcher Zeitung.