The surge of migrants across borders is changing politics across Europe, eroding the centre ground and feeding populists. Swiss voters chose at the weekend to strengthen the hand of the far right, giving a record victory to the anti-immigration and Eurosceptic People’s Party.
The result will alarm its neighbours. In France, the National Front leader, Marine Le Pen, is positioning herself as a strong rival to François Hollande in the 2017 presidential election, and another member of the Le Pen clan is polling well. Angela Merkel’s grand coalition of centre right and centre left is struggling, meanwhile, to handle the migrant flow. The mainland of the European Union is under strain as thousands from Syria, the wider Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa cram into makeshift dormitories. Local councils, police, schools and medical services cannot keep up with the pace of absorption. These are easy pickings for the Pied Pipers of the ultra-nationalist far right.
Switzerland, though not a member of the European Union, is infected by the fear of borders being overwhelmed. Along its Italian frontier in particular it is concerned about the numbers of people seeking asylum, but also about arrivals from the Balkans. Under its bilateral free movement of persons agreement with the EU it is required to give Bulgarian and Romanian citizens full access to the Swiss labour market by next June at the latest. The Swiss anxiety was already clear early last year, before the present migrant exodus from a disintegrating Middle East. In a referendum the Swiss voted to introduce quotas on EU migrants from 2017. Difficult negotiations with the European Commission are under way as a result.
Until now, Switzerland and Norway have been held up as models for a British future outside the European Union. Switzerland after all tops global competitiveness league tables. It is rich, it is free and, in the view of those who want a negotiated divorce from Brussels, it can deal on its own terms with the big trading blocs of the world. Douglas Carswell, Ukip’s member of parliament, says the world’s best immigration systems, Switzerland and Australia, are outside the EU.
Yet the Swiss election underlines that the country is very far from being a perfect model for British “outers”. It has open borders with other EU countries. Britain would feel deluged if it were to have the same gross inflow of EU migration as Switzerland — about 11 EU migrants per 1,000 of the Swiss population. This is not an ideal goal for those British sceptics who calculate that withdrawal from the EU would allow the country to regain control of its borders. Switzerland is a party to the Schengen agreement. Britain is not and does not plan to be, but should note the rise and rise of the Swiss People’s Party even so.
Advertisement
There must be more candour about the options open to Britain. The Swiss model is no more than a halfway house, straddling the in-out line. It is not part of the Brussels club yet it implements the working time directive. Some 100 agreements bind Switzerland to the EU. Partially integrated, it makes concessions in order to gain access to the European single market yet has no agreement with the EU on the free movement of services.
After last year’s referendum a European commissioner declared: “The single market is not a Swiss cheese — you cannot have a single market with holes in it.” Brussels argues that the Swiss cannot opt out of one element of the relationship without endangering the others, including market access.
Britain must pay attention to the twists and turns of these negotiations. They are an indicator of how far Britain would be able to win a “pick and mix” agreement from Brussels. There is no doubt that continued access to the single market would come at a price, and that price would probably include limits to British control of British borders.