Consultation on the “Switzerland-EU Package” is open – Let us tackle the bureaucratic tapeworm!

On 13 June 2025, the Federal Council published the new version of the “Switzerland-EU Package” – which it had long kept under tight wraps – and opened the consultation, which will run until 31 October.¹ Cantons, political parties, associations, and interested citizens will be able to submit their comments.

With all the trimmings, the FDFA is delivering to us a tapeworm of bureaucracy spanning thousands of pages. Brussels and Bern resort to a whole bag of tricks: First, they break everything down into uncountable individual parts so as to obscure the bigger picture as well as the fundamental interventions in our state system. Second, they downplay and gloss over the swamping of our laws with vast quantities of EU legal acts which will make our heads spin. Another trick: Many Swiss citizens are likely to be deterred from reading the treaty texts independently by the sheer volume as well as by the formalistic language. In EU countries, citizens are accustomed to texts from Brussels being – at best! – somewhat understandable only for European law experts. But in Switzerland, we citizens are the sovereign. In order to form an opinion on the institutional agreement and to cast our vote on it, we must understand what it says.
  Countering these methods and revealing the contents of the package step by step – without allowing ourselves to be distracted from the essentials! – will be our task for the time being. The key point has been a recurring theme in Current Concerns in recent years: The construct from Brussels is incompatible with the Swiss state system.

Overview of the
consultation documents

12 agreements / Federal Council explanatory report (931 pages) / domestic implementation: 9 federal decrees / overview of EU legislative acts that would be incorporated into the agreements (95 EU directives and regulations) / 14 fact sheets on the individual agreements / FAQs / 5 studies on the economic impact of the package (all compiled by the federal administration plus related parties, therefore correspondingly biased) / summary of the 5 studies, with the interesting title “Media Raw Material”: i.e. leading strings for Journalists?

Recommended reading for voters

The Federal Council’s extensive explanatory report is a first-class propaganda publication; let us rather stick to the original versions of the agreements. At best, the table of contents may be useful as an overview and for looking up individual terms. The same applies to the “fact sheets” and the catalogue of pre-prepared “Questions asked by Citizens” (FAQs). Here is a tip for studying the agreements: Skip the indigestible formalities of Brussels bureaucracy and focus on the actual substantive points.
  A consolation for those who do not want to be overwhelmed by the digital chaos: We have a few months to familiarise ourselves, until the consultation period ends. The critical voices that have already pronounced their opinions and will surely continue to do so will be of great help in classifying the individual agreements and the overall situation.

The elephant in the room:
The “institutional elements”

For all the planned agreements and their implementation into Swiss law, as well as for the 95 EU laws that would apply in Switzerland, it should be noted that this is merely a snapshot in time. With the “dynamic adoption of law,” an as yet unknown number of further decrees would be added to the 95, which would undermine our Swiss legislation. So much for the “legal certainty” that the package is supposed to bring us.
  “The new institutional elements include the dynamic alignment of legislation, the uniform interpretation of the agreements, their surveillance and the settlement of disputes in the event of disagreements between Switzerland and the EU.” (Fact Sheet “Institutional Elements”)
  As a reminder: The Federal Council repeats like a mantra that the new “institutional elements” would apply “only” to the five market access agreements of Bilateral I (free movement of persons, land transport, air transport, agriculture, and technical barriers to trade MRA). Indeed, these five agreements would already sufficiently curtail Switzerland’s sovereignty. However, in the fact sheet “Institutional Elements”, the Federal Council admits that the Electricity Agreement and the Food Safety Agreement are also to be subjected to the entire EU bureaucratic programme. (The latter has hardly been discussed so far, but its 128 pages are likely to contain some explosive material, especially for all those Swiss citizens who care about a healthy environment and its independent regulation by us, the Swiss voters.)
  The Federal Council continues: “Switzerland and the EU have agreed on new institutional elements for these agreements. These ensure that the agreements function well and that the same rules apply to all market participants at all times in the common internal market.” With such devout parroting of the Brussels narrative, one has to ask: Which side is the Federal Council actually on?

Example: “Agreement on the
Regular Financial contribution”

As an example, let us have a look at the planned “agreement on Switzerland’s Regular Financial Contribution”.² Incidentally, the institutional rules also apply to this. At Brussels’ insistence, Switzerland has already paid so-called cohesion payments twice (CHF 1.3 billion each, spread over several years). According to the agreement, Switzerland will be obliged to pay regular amounts to the EU in the future. The money is to flow to individual EU states for specific projects in order to contribute to “reducing economic and social inequalities” and thus to “stability” and “cohesion” within the EU. A small supplementary question: Is it not the responsibility of the EU itself to ensure stability and cohesion among its member states?

The number of contributions is to be adjusted “dynamically” every few years
We are, to put it mildly, to be only partially informed about the amounts.
  Switzerland’s initial financial contribution from 2030 to 2036 will amount to CHF 350 million annually, of which CHF 308 million is for cohesion and CHF 42 million for “cooperation in the field of migration” (Annex II of the Agreement, paragraphs 1 and 2). By the way, Switzerland already contributes a significant amount to the latter under the Schengen-Dublin Agreement.
  But from 2037 onwards, the CHF 350 million per year will be scrap paper. Because, like everything agreed with Brussels, the amount will be adjusted “dynamically”, according to Annex I of the Agreement. Try reading the numerous criteria for determining future contributions in Annex I and Appendix 1 – nobody will understand this! Sample: “For the purposes of the calculation of the indexation factor the following applies: (i) the real exchange rate of the group of Partner States in the area of cohesion in the previous contribution period shall consist of those Partner States’ nominal exchange rate vis-à-vis the Swiss franc multiplied by those Partner States’ HICP-based aggregate and divided by the Swiss HICP.” And so on.³ The only thing that is clear is that the annual contribution will be increased every few years by Brussels according to mysterious calculation methods.

A total of 3.292 billion francs by 2036
Did you know that Swiss taxpayers are expected to pay an additional 130 million francs annually until the agreements enter into force, retroactively from 2024? That is, long before the referendum!⁴ From the entry into force, the contribution of 350 million would then apply.
  Those interested must add up the amounts of the various loans the Federal Council intends to commit to in our name and with our money from the various draft federal decrees: Cohesion 2030–2036: CHF 2,005.08 million; Migration 2030–2036: CHF 273.42 million; Cohesion 2024–2029: CHF 1,013.7 million; i.e. a total of CHF 3,292.2 million. From 2037 onwards, as already mentioned, the demands from Brussels will hardly amount to any less.⁵ So much for the communication from the federal government in Bern.

The entire “institutional programme” ...
What the Federal Council “forgot” to mention: Although the agreement on Switzerland’s financial contribution burdens us exclusively with billions in financial costs and a pile of administrative chores and duties, Brussels has nevertheless included the entire institutional programme in Part III, “Institutional Provisions.” There is a Joint Committee (Article 14), the recourse to an arbitral tribunal in the event of a disagreement between the contracting parties, and this follows, “as appropriate,” the legal interpretation “by competent international dispute resolution bodies” [ECJ, mw] (Article 16, paragraph 3). And there are the controversial “proportionate compensatory measures” that one contracting party can take against the other “within the framework of the Agreement or any agreement that is part of the List of Agreements” if the other fails to obey orders (Article 17, paragraph 1). Incidentally, the agreements that the EU may violate in order to punish Switzerland include several more than five.⁶

For what “misdeed” could Switzerland be punished under the “Financial Contribution” Agreement?
Since Switzerland’s payment practices toward Western powers are rather overzealous, the question arises as to what Switzerland should be sanctioned for. A potential dispute could arise from disagreements with the beneficiary EU states. According to Article 13 of the agreement, Switzerland may monitor whether the contracting parties are using the money from our tax coffers as agreed (Section 2). Otherwise, according to Section 4, it has the right “to fight all forms of corruption in the implementation of Switzerland’s financial contribution and provide for effective measures and procedures to prevent, identify, and address any acts which jeopardise the proper use of funds […]..” In the fact sheet, the Federal Council lists “for example, the suspension of payments” as a possible measure. It is quite possible that the government of one of these states will not like the Swiss measures because it would like to have the money without adhering to the agreements. The EU side in the arbitration tribunal could then conjure up a suitable ECJ ruling, and we will be sanctioned for it. •

¹ https://www.europa.eda.admin.ch/en/consultation-swiss-eu-package
² “Agreement between the Swiss Confederation and the European Union on Switzerland’s regular financial contribution towards reducing economic and social disparities in the European Union”
³ Appendix 1 Method for the determination of the adjustment referred to in point (b) of paragraph 1 of Annex I
⁴ “Switzerland’s one-time additional financial commitment covering the period between the end of 2024 and the end of 2029” Annex III to the Agreement.
⁵ “Domestic implementation.” Federal Resolution on Commitment Credit for Cohesion, Federal Resolution on Commitment Credit for Migration, and Federal Resolution on Additional Financial Commitment
⁶ Article 3 (a) of the Agreement: Freedom of Movement, Air Transport, Land Transport, Agriculture, MRA, Nuclear Programmes, Space Programmes, Electricity, Health, Food Safety