After the signing, the European Commission’s president Ursula von der Leyen travelled to Bern to celebrate the new agreements with the then Swiss president Viola Amherd.
“This agreement between the EU and Switzerland is historic,” Von der Leyen said. “This marks the beginning of a long-lasting cooperation.
For people in Switzerland and the EU this agreement is an excellent basis for many good years together… we are as close as we could possibly be,” she added.
Amherd described the deal as a “milestone for the stabilisation and further development” of relations between the two parties.
“This is in the interests of Switzerland’s and the EU’s population, our economies, employees, consumers, students and researchers,” she noted.
Since then, however, not much progress has been made on either side toward the implementation of the new agreement.
Why is that?
After the brouhaha surrounding the signing has had died down, Bern and Brussels got to work looking at how the new treaties could actually be implemented in compliance with their own internal political systems.
On the Brussels’ side, the agreements may need to be ratified by EU authorities before they enter into force.
It is still unclear, however, which institutions within the EU are responsible for the ratification process.
What is clear is that Brussels can only conclude international agreements in certain areas. If the treaties go beyond these areas — as the ones with Switzerland seem to — the approval of the national parliaments of the EU member states is required.
And getting the parliaments of 27 countries to act on this may take quite some time.
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What is the delay on the Swiss side?
Before being enacted, any new piece of legislation (or a new amendment to an existing law) must be put to a mandatory referendum.
In the case of the EU package (and given the opposition from certain groups — read more about this below), the government has decided that to optimise the chances of the EU deal being approved by voters, it would ‘cut’ the package into separate “slices.”
Each slice could then be put to a referendum separately, in the hope that it will be easier to win support on each narrow set of issues than on a broad package.
However, that may not happen either.
That’s because in February 2025, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council said that “the constitutional requirements for a mandatory referendum are not met for any of the new agreements,” which means the treaties should go into effect without further ado.
The same applies to the extension of existing bilateral agreements with Brussels.
The reason is that the agreements “do not provide for Switzerland’s accession to a ‘supranational community’” — in this case, the EU, the committee pointed out.
And, according to the Federal Justice Office, “EU treaties cannot be subject to a mandatory referendum.”
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Opposition may prevail
But even if the referendum doesn’t happen (and EU parliaments approve the deal), it doesn’t necessarily mean that the path to implementation will be without bumps.
The right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has warned that the agreement would “signify the total submission of Switzerland to the EU,” because it would require Bern to adopt European law and, in doing so, abandon its sovereignty.
The party has already said that it would launch a popular initiative against the EU deal if the government would enact it.
READ ALSO: How will Switzerland benefit from new pact with the European Union?
