Switzerland must keep to its own unique path

The Sonderbund of 1845
and its antecedents

Many historians and legal experts who advocate Switzerland’s accession to the EU and NATO give an abbreviated account of the prehistory of the Sonderbund from 1815 onwards, i.e. above all the periods of the Restauration and the Regeneration in Switzerland, ignoring the historical state of research into this important phase of Swiss history. In doing so, they follow the one-dimensional liberal “master narrative”, which describes the liberals (Freisinn) as the sole bearer of progress and sees the Catholic Conservatives as stuck in the “order of the corporative state” and as a brake on modernity.
  The period from 1798 to 1848, i.e. from the Helvetic era to the founding of the federal state, was a phase of political upheaval for Switzerland, without black and white, but with many shades of gray. A high point was the Sonderbund War of 1847. Like the liberal Siebner Concordat of March 1832 and the conservative Sarnerbund of November 1832, the Sonderbund or “Schutzvereinigung”, founded in 1845, violated the provisions of the Federal Treaty of 1815. This founding act was, however, understandable in view of some prior blatant violations of the law, such as the abolition of monasteries and the anticlerical coup-attempts Freischarenzüge, as well as the inactivity of the Tagsatzung, i.e., the assembly of delegates from the cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Sonderbund (like the Jesuit question) suited certain liberal radicals because they believed that it would be almost impossible to transform Switzerland without violence. For this reason, they propagandistically pushed the conflict to the point of war, which fortunately only remained a “fratricidal quarrel” thanks to the restraint of the cantons and the General of the Tagsatzung troops, Guillaume Henri Dufour.
  For their part, the supporters of the Sonderbund manoeuvred themselves onto the sidelines and intensified the confessionalisation to such an extent that the Reformed conservatives, among others, who were sympathetic to the political concerns of the Sonderbund, turned away or remained neutral. As the majority of the population of the Sonderbund cantons rejected an offensive war beyond the cantonal borders, the military leadership was inadequate and there was a lack of mutual agreement, the Sonderbund’s actions were doomed to failure. The assessment of the Sonderbund’s antecedents is central and is generally given too little weight. Many historians and jurists remain stuck in old patterns here, although this phase was a decisive foundation for the later federal state. The Fribourg historian Oskar Vasella states in this regard that “a greater freedom of historical thought” is needed, particularly in the assessment of Catholic conservatism, in order to present the antecedents of the founding of the federal state more truthfully.
  The federal cantons were already “laboratories of freedom” during the Restoration period, which ultimately also contributed to the development of democracy at a communal and cantonal level. In the phase of the Regeneration from 1830 onwards, this then led to the Catholic conservatives fighting for more popular rights in their cantons alongside radical and early socialist circles, for example in the canton of Lucerne, where, after St. Gallen and Baselland, democratic-conservative circles introduced the legislative veto as a precursor to the optional referendum. Contrary to popular assertions today, Catholic conservatives played a decisive role in Switzerland’s model of success.
  The Federal Constitution of 1848 was the first constitution of the Swiss Confederation that the Swiss electorate gave itself. Thus, for the second half of the 19^th century, Switzerland became a democratic republican island in the midst of the European monarchies. In a figurative sense, comparisons with the present day will be quite welcome.
  The Sonderbund indirectly helped to make a centralist solution more difficult and to prevent further revolutionary transformations in the spirit of the radicals. Vasella writes: “Perhaps it was only through the civil war, which nobody wants and nobody praises, that the spirits came to reflect on the law; perhaps it was only through the years of resistance by the conservatives and through the Sonderbund War that the revolutionary wave was broken. The Federal Constitution of 1848 saved the cantonal principle and thus also preserved the idea of a balance between small and large cantons.” In the following decades, the focus was on further equalisation and the integration of the losers in the spirit of concordance, rather than on the victors’ dictates and exclusion.
  Former Federal Councillor Alain Berset (SP) places the contribution of the Catholic Conservatives to the Federal Constitution in a historically correct context: “After the Sonderbund War, the victorious cantons did not simply write a new constitution and impose it on the Catholic cantons. They did it together with them – and created a sovereign state that was on an equal footing with the powers of Europe.” This was a “historic constitutional compromise” that was not achieved in other European states.

Parallels to the present –
Time to strengthen the
democratically constituted nation state

Most EU and NATO supporters claim that today’s debate about Switzerland’s integration into the EU and NATO has important parallels with the founding of the federal state in 1848. In fact, the core issue is one of sovereignty. In this context, the proponents of accession emphasise that the Swiss cantons also surrendered sovereignty to the Confederation at that time, and that Switzerland would now also have to take a similar step towards the EU. On the one hand, this suggests that the EU is on the road to success with its desired goal of a European federal state; on the other hand, Switzerland is being persuaded that by joining the EU it would be doing exactly what it has already done once in its history, only this time on a larger scale. Those who do not support this are generally accused of “conservatism”.
  Thomas Cottier, an economic law expert and a proper EU and NATO turbo, even claims that these critics formed a “new Sonderbund” today. This kind of historical comparison is seriously flawed and ideologically misleading.
  What does the EU structure actually look like today? Cottier speaks of the EU as a “new alliance in Europe” and then even of a “federal alliance”. However, the EU is de facto neither a federation of states nor a federation of countries with equal rights. It is not a nation, but a centralised entity (Brussels) that is held together by various treaties. The individual countries only adhere to the various treaties to a limited extent (cf. Maastricht criteria). The EU’s tendency to become a bureaucratic juggernaut is obvious. Since its beginnings, i.e., since the Coal and Steel Community in 1951, the EC/EU must also be characterised by the concept of supranationality. This means that the individual member states have been ceding more and more sovereign rights to the centre and their own state sovereignty has been continuously eroded.
  In the individual EU countries – with the exception of Ireland – there is not even provision made for referendums concerning those international treaties that form the legal basis. The EU is also not federally structured, as Cottier claims, and even the EU Federal Constitution, which was largely introduced with the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, and which has been put on ice since, does not contain any classic federal elements. Accordingly, the EU authorities’ constant talk of subsidiarity bears no relation to reality. Cottier’s assertion that the current structures of the EU – “a system of multi–level government” – are compatible with the Swiss Federal Constitution, is absurd.

Appreciation of the unique Swiss path

Cottier and others are also talking about a “global confrontation between democracy and autocracy”. Such a dichotomy is nonsensical. We  only have to look at the state of democracy in Europe. The two EU “core countries”, France and Germany, are increasingly sinking into economic crisis and political chaos. France is presided over by an autocratic “substitute emperor”, its parliament persists in infighting, showing no willingness to compromise. Germany has long been ruled by a party dictatorship that is increasingly eroding liberal and democratic principles and erects “firewalls” instead.
  At a time when intellectuals such as Cottier want to usher in the post-national or post-democratic age in Europe, it is time to consolidate the democratically constituted nation state and further strengthen it as a state under the rule of law. This is the only way to ensure peace and order. Consolidating the nation states in Europe would also mean completing the Enlightenment project and finally, as a “Europe of nation states”, shaking off the status of a US vassal.

Neutral Switzerland must consistently support this. It must continue on its unique path with neutrality as the foundation of peace and thus become more and more of a democratic model in an increasingly disrupted world. The Swiss Confederation unites the best European traditions and could help to build a European security architecture through dialogue, and that simply without NATO. •