Geneva, Switzerland. 10
February. Genevois philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau once wrote “Free people, remember this maxim; we may
acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost”. As I write this I am looking over stately Geneva
as it embraces Lac Leman under a grey dappled sky. Yesterday, exercising the right of direct
democracy the Swiss people here voted by a margin of 50.3% to 49.7% to
re-introduce curbs on the free movement of peoples agreed a decade ago with the
EU. The implications are profound because the vote is really about who gets to
decide and where.
The vote now instructs
the Swiss Government to re-introduce immigration quotas, to limit rights to asylum
and to restrict the rights of families of foreign workers to live in
Switzerland. Swiss citizens must again
be considered for work before a foreign national. The motivations of those who voted for the
break with the EU, for that is what it is, were motivated by factors felt
deeply by people in many EU member-states; the destruction of identity and
social cohesion by hyper-immigration and the under-cutting of labour markets.
Why does the vote
matter? Switzerland unlike the UK is
part of the so-called borderless Schengen Area, which is at the very heart of the
principle which underpins the EU; the free movement of people under Article 3c
of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. By voting to end unfettered free movement between
Switzerland and the EU the Swiss are in effect voting to leave Schengen. And, by so doing they have established a
principle of popular rejectionism that will resonate across Europe.
How Brussels responds could
decide the future direction of the EU.
At its heart is a fundamental issue of democracy and the relationship
between the people of a state and their obligations under treaties signed on their
behalf with an EU that is slowly morphing from international institution into a
form of government. To that end by
transferring power through treaty from a state to EU institutions the importance
and influence of the national voter has been progressively diluted. The Swiss yesterday effectively said enough.
Brussels counters that
by saying the European Parliament exists to prevent a democratic deficit
because as a directly-elected chamber it provides effective political oversight. For the Swiss that is irrelevant because they are not a member-state and
have no members in the European Parliament.
Even for the citizenry of the EU the Parliament is regarded as an
illegitimate talk-shop for over-funded and by and large irrelevant minor
politicians for whom only a very few Europeans ever bother to vote.
No doubt hushed
conversations will already be taking place between Bern and Brussels over the
need for a second referendum at some as yet unspecified date to give the Swiss
people the chance to get the answer ‘right’. However, if those who run the EU are
intelligent they will stop and pause as to the reasons why the Swiss people voted
the way that they did and accept that the EU is truly at a crossroads between more
or less ‘Europe’.
To do that Brussels must come
down from Mount Olympus and start to listen.
Everywhere I go I hear the same message from perfectly decent thinking
and frustrated people. The EU is a distant power that imposes
itself on me. The EU is forcing unwanted
change on my society and threatening my culture. The EU makes me poorer, more insecure and
less free. The EU never listens to
me. The EU is only for the powerful. It is not my EU.
Now, I have just spent
the weekend with a close friend of mine who is a senior Commission official
based here in Geneva. He objects to much of this and even the idea that a European elite exists. My assertion as such is simply a factually
incorrect cliché. To my mind such views just reinforce the gulf that exists
between millions of citizens and those perfectly decent but detached people who
spend their lives in the Brussels institutions.
The Swiss may indeed be
a special case but the reasons for the vote are not. If the Swiss are treated with respect and
some adjustment made to their relationship with the EU acceptable to the people
then some power will at least have been reinvested in them. If the Swiss are made an example of as a lesson
to the British and others about the price of dissent then Europe is on the
rocky, downhill Swiss alpine road away from liberty.
Swiss Justice Minister Simonetta
Sommaruga said, “This has far-reaching consequences for Switzerland…and our
relations with the European Union”. The
consequences go far beyond that. Once,
just for once, it would be good to see those in power be it in Brussels or
EU member-states asking themselves why the people feel as do they rather than
tell them yet again they have simply got it wrong.
It is called democracy.
Julian Lindley-French
