Letters / A lesson from Switzerland?
The Swiss have quit EU trade talks because Brussels wanted Switzerland to sign control away.
From 2014, the Swiss and the EU have been involved in increasingly fractious discussion. Now, Bern has formally quit the negotiations to convert future relations with the bloc into a single overarching “framework agreement”.
Swiss critics say that Eurocrats would have the ability to meddle in the affairs of a sovereign nation, and the Swiss were, finally, not prepared to put up with that.
Philip Erzinger, head of Kompass Europe, an anti-framework campaign group, suggested that the contract on offer ‘was one sided. It required us [the Swiss] to take on EU law without any mechanism for saying No’.
He further suggested that this ‘would have been a direct interference in our system of direct democracy and cantons in Switzerland.’
Top pollster Lukas Golder, of GFS Bern, said the Swiss people believed their government had made too many concessions in the negotiations with Brussels.
So, the Swiss want to control their own country, not to be controlled by the EU. Is there a lesson here for Scottish parties that want to be independent?
Brian Nugent
Restore Scotland
Hamnavoe
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