In February 2021, Christoph Blocher warned about Corona dictator Alain Bers: “Democracy will be turned off. You are a dictator, you tell it like it is.” At the same time, his daughter Magdalena Martullo praised China’s handling of the pandemic. Graubünden SVP national adviser and head of Ems-Chemie said: “Meetings, trade fairs, developments, takeovers – the Chinese are leading the entire economic program. What is Europe doing? Lock everyone up, shut down a lot of things, slow it down, make it harder, harder and cover it up with money.”
Switzerland is busy with its latest corona measures these days; Parliament is debating whether the federal government should offer free Covid tests for a few more months. Meanwhile in China, whose population is almost unvaccinated and only with bad vaccines, we see what dictatorship (corona) really means.
For a long time, Beijing has been the most important field of action for Swiss foreign policy, ahead of Moscow and other destinations, if possible outside the EU. Now the Federal Council is trying to secure our country more firmly in Europe. However, he has a hard time with him.
For the past six months, Secretary of State Livia Leu has been debating in Brussels whether it is worth negotiating with the European Union to mend a tainted relationship. According to media reports, Switzerland has managed to reach a compromise on the protection of wages and the right to social assistance for EU citizens. But there is no movement on a really important point: the question of who should have the final say in legal disputes between Switzerland and the EU.
Brussels insists that only the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg can interpret EU law. Secretary of State Leu recently endorsed this position with startling clarity. In early November, a senior Bernese diplomat told Radio SRF: “We fully agree that the European Court of Justice has a monopoly on the interpretation of EU law.” A little later, of course, it became known that Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis would like to propose to the EU that the Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne be given the main role in disputes, and the European Court of Justice, at best, a secondary role.
Thirty years ago, on December 6, 1992, a narrow majority of voters rejected Switzerland’s accession to the European Economic Area (EEA). It was a triumph for Christoph Blocher. He fought for this with the argument: “We have not fought for 700 years with foreign judges, to now exchange our freedom for foreign law and foreign judges.”
These words resonate in the present. Fear of a new debate about “foreign judges” has largely contributed to the collapse of talks on a framework agreement in 2021. And Ignazio Cassis’s idea that a Swiss federal court should interpret EU law shows that the same fear still paralyzes the Federal Council.
From the Swiss point of view, the EU may seem stubborn and dogmatic in the truest sense of the word. Conversely, it cannot be denied that it is the Confederation that wants something from the EU: free access to a market of 450 million consumers. It is equally clear that Switzerland is running out of options. The Blocher family might be excited about China. However, the day has finally come for Beijing as an alternative to a more intensive partnership with Europe.
Switzerland has only one choice left – none. Does she want to cooperate with “foreign judges” or with foreign executioners?