With umbrella, charm and ogi – How the Federal Council acted after EEA no

They shine: a tanned, dynamic Adolf Ogi, Minister of Transport and Federal President, who strives to stand at eye level in a handshake with the almost gigantic German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Next to them, somewhat like a schoolboy, are the federal councilors Kaspar Villiger and Flavio Cotti.

The setting is the entrance to Lohn, the stately estate in Kehrsatz near Bern, which serves as a guesthouse for the Federal Council. The state government has been welcoming high-profile personalities from all over the world here for decades. On October 18, 1993, Kohl, the Chancellor of German Unity, the heavyweight of European politics after the end of the Cold War, is our guest.

Chancellor Kohl described himself as a friend of the Confederacy. And Switzerland desperately needed friends. On December 6, 1992, voters approved the treaty of accession of Switzerland European Economic Area (EEA) turned down. The Federal Council had chosen one option HONOR-The accession was announced as a step towards the country’s deep integration into a growing European Community. In the fall of 1991, his strategic goal was for Switzerland to become a member of the EU decided.

The HONOR-No has fundamentally questioned this goal. In 1993, the Federal Council therefore had to consult Brussels and the Member States against heart to accept Switzerland, at least temporarily, as a special case of European integration.

The Oct. 18 meeting took place during Kohl’s private stay at the Locarno Film Festival in August. The discussions with the Federal Council delegation took place behind closed doors, which was extraordinary. Not a single employee or diplomat recorded what was discussed with Kohl. Handwritten keywords of Federal President Ogi have been preserved in the archive; Federal councilor Villiger published his memories of the conversation in an autobiography. It was about European integration and the role of Germany. But of course also about the situation in Switzerland. In a letter of gratitude to Kohl, Ogi once again emphasized Switzerland’s priorities in the upcoming bilateral negotiations with the United States EU firm.

It was the case EU in sectoral negotiations, to offer Switzerland the most advantageous conditions for a bilateral agreement that was not actually foreseen in Europe. After the fall of the ‘Iron Curtain’ in 1989/90, all European states strove to EU-Membership. Above all, Switzerland’s neutral partners – Austria, Sweden, Finland – are all also members of the once important Free Trade Association EVAwhich actually collapsed.

But the newly independent states of Central and Eastern Europe also sought connections with the EU. According to Chancellor Kohl, Switzerland, despite all its sympathy for the idiosyncrasies of the Confederation, would soon turn to the EC-Admission course a commandment of the simplest insight”. “Swiss resistance makes no sense in the long term,” he warned at the meeting in Lohn.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Cotti and Minister of Economic Affairs Jean-Pascal Delamuraz therefore argued this in June EC-Commission in Brussels: “the bilateral approach is inadequate and provisional” and the goal remains that EU-Accession, but that is precisely why it is important that they EC “Give the Swiss people a conciliatory image of themselves” by accommodating Switzerland at the bilateral level.

The members of the Federal Council repeated this mantra throughout 1993 in an unprecedented number of meetings with European leaders.

Federal President Ogi did it in January World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos and in the spring together with Federal Councilors Cotti and Delamuraz during the working visit of British Prime Minister John Major to Bern. In June, while in Paris, Ogi was unexpectedly received by French President François Mitterrand at the Élysée Palace. Ogi immediately invited him to his home in the Bernese Oberland, where he welcomed him warmly on December 3: “Monsieur le Président, vous aimez la Suisse, et les Suisses vous aiment,” he greeted Mitterrand in his disarming way.

On November 9, the Council of Foreign Ministers… EC decided to accept Switzerland’s negotiating proposals. The first hurdle had been overcome. There were “good lawyers, if not friends” within the organization EC deployed to Switzerland, according to the head of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs (EDA)Federal councilor Cotti, about the ‘thaw’ in Brussels.

Of course this was not the case. In particular the southern member states of the EC put Switzerland under great pressure. Portuguese Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva already said this on the occasion of WEF Ogi expressed his disappointment over the no HONOR and made it clear that he now expected “some gestures from Switzerland, for example in the areas of family reunification (guest workers) or cohesion”.

In the affair surrounding the sale of several thousand tons of salt slag that a Swiss company had exported to Portugal, Lisbon needed Bern’s poor situation with regard to bilateral agreements as leverage. Ambassador Franz von Däniken, the senior official in the EDA, recognized that the export of industrial waste was a problematic issue. “Placing such a problem at the center of bilateral relations with another supposedly friendly Western European state and trying to solve it with an approach that comes close to blackmail, with reference to concerns about Swiss integration policy, betrays However, poor style and a loss of sense of proportion.”

The strongest negotiating partner on the issue of adopting bilateral negotiating mandates Switzerland–EC was Spain. Madrid took advantage of Bern’s weak negotiating position to accommodate Spanish agricultural export requests in cheese, meat and alcohol, as well as discussions about a better position for Spanish guest workers in Switzerland.

In mid-December, Federal President Ogi went to Madrid at the invitation of the Spanish king to herald a positive new beginning in bilateral relations with Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez. At the end of the year, the road for Switzerland actually seemed paved EU could enter into bilateral negotiations on individual sectors – economy, transport, research, free movement of people, agricultural trade. However, there was still a long way to go until the bilateral Agreement I was concluded in 1999. The files, which will become available to the public on January 1, 2025, will show how the journey continued.