Switzerland needs reinventing, says British MP

Many readers of Newsweek magazine have reacted angrily to comments made by Denis Macshane, a former British minister for Europe, in an article on “The End of Switzerland” in the current issue of the magazine.

“This article is all about lies,” wrote one reader.

Macshane, who told Swisster on Tuesday that the article’s title was “a bit over the top,” lists a raft of criticisms about Switzerland’s relationship with the EU and the structure of a political system, which brings nationalist and extremist views to the fore.

“I am a fan of Switzerland,” he told Swisster. “But a new Switzerland has to be invented,” said the MP.

Macshane has blogged about Switzerland long being “the model country,” but its best attributes, which he enjoyed when he worked and brought up children in the country after arriving in 1979, have disappeared.

Swiss neutrality encourages events such as the Davos World Economic Forum – where Macshane went skiing with Swiss parliamentary colleagues this year – but independence is falling by the wayside as the country is increasingly drawn into the EU, says the politician.

“The Swiss are now regularly pushed around by Washington and Brussels,” said the Newsweek article.

Macshane quotes a Swiss parliamentary friend, Christa Markwalder, who describes her country as a “passive member of the EU.”

Geog Lutz, a political scientist at the University of Lausanne, agrees: “Switzerland is probably better at implementing EU laws than other EU countries,” he told Swisster.

In 2005, 55 per cent of Swiss voted to sign up to the Schengen and Dublin agreements, which allow free passage across borders and oblige authorities to share information with European colleagues on crime, and on asylum applications.

Markwalder and others, including Jakob Kellenberger, the head of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, are advocating full EU membership, according to Macshane’s article.

Lutz says polls testing the temperature of Swiss EU sentiment mean “it is extremely unlikely that Switzerland will join the EU.”

Despite the media campaign being cooked up by the integrationist Macshane and his friends in Bern, self-interest is likely to prevail according to Lutz. He says the Swiss look for incentives when discussing the EU and at the moment bilateral treaties take care of the issues at stake, including trade.

But Macshane says Switzerland is increasingly taking on the negatives of EU cooperation – regulation and implementing EU laws – without having the benefits of representation in Brussels.

The Newsweek article’s second prong of attack was around religious intolerance and the need for political structural reform.

Switzerland currently chairs the Council of Europe, a Strasbourg-based political forum, with very limited power, where Macshane is a British delegate.

At a January meeting the north England MP challenged Swiss foreign minister, Micheline Calmey Rey, over the Swiss ban on minaret construction, saying it violated the European Conventions on Human Rights.

In the lead-up to the controversial vote, the Swiss government announced its opposition to a ban.

The Briton thinks that too many parties exist in the Swiss parliament, fuelling a rise of nationalist sentiment against Muslims and even against the growing influx of German doctors.

Minaret construction should be “a question for the cantons or the cities to decide,” said Macshane. “I respect referendums but cannot agree when they produce such a xenophobic result,” he told Swisster, adding that the vote “further isolates Switzerland from the Muslim world and encourages Gaddafi to treat the country with contempt.”

Bern has been locked in confrontation for more than a year with Libya over the imprisonment of two Swiss nationals arrested in what has been called a tit-for-tat affair after Gaddafi's son was previously and briefly held in Geneva for the alleged abuse of staff.

Lutz said Macshane might look at the UK’s own British National Party for proof that even a system built on fewer big parties can produce racists and extremists. Regardless of the political structure, economic downturns usually produce some nationalist feeling, said the political scientist.

Macshane’s article also covers the movement away from banking secrecy, which removes much of Swiss financial centres’ comparative advantage, he says.

Other criticisms include the drop in the punctuality of trains and Swiss people’s reluctance to learn the other languages of their fellow citizens. “Denis MacShane hasn't a clue about what's going on in Switzerland's school system,” said one comment on Newsweek’s website.

Macshane also recognises a number of good points about the country, such as pre-crisis economic growth, lower debt levels than other European economies and a strong eco-innovation sector.

But the ‘Sonderfall’ – exceptional nation – which Macshane found three decades ago needs rebuilding, starting with Berne’s relationship with Brussels, says the MP.