The trouble with history is that it does not stay still

For better for worse, circumstances change. There is no need to quote Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's famous riposte - we all know it. The trouble is that a good part of the post-1945 structure was assumed to last for ever. Germany was always going to be down, was the thought in many a mind, particularly in France. Anyone could have told those architects of the "European structure" that this was a pipe dream. The Soviet Union was going to last for ever and the far-off conflicts in the Middle East would never seriously affect European countries. Should one laugh or snort at such ridiculous presumption?

At present, there is no Soviet Union but there is a Russia that is displaying all the dangerous signs of a rather weak bully; as to the Middle Eastern conflicts they have long ago invaded most European countries and are likely to continue to do so.

By and large I have kept out of the migrant/refugee discussion because as I have said before I have no solutions any more than the people who keep talking about it do. I need not add that much of all that discussion is based on what the latest headlines and pictures are.

All the same, a couple of items have caught my attention today. One relates to Chancellor Merkel's meeting with President Erdogan of Turkey (where there is another election due on November 1 and the general political situation is far from stable).

It seems that

Germany is ready to help drive forward Turkey's European Union accession process, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday (18 October), extending support to Ankara in exchange for Turkish help in stemming the flow of refugees to Europe.

Well, well. And how is Turkey going to do that? Are they even interested in this kind of bribery or blackmail?

A "safe zone" in northern Syria, a proposal long championed by Turkey but which has gained little international traction, is badly needed, Davutoglu said.

"Our priority is to prevent illegal immigration and reduce the number of people crossing our borders. In that respect we have had very fruitful discussions with the EU recently," he said.

But Davutoglu said while progress had been made on an EU offer to Turkey last week of an action plan including "re-energised" talks on joining the bloc, several issues remained to be resolved.

"Firstly, the sharing of the refugee burden should be fair. The amount of aid ... is secondary. What is more important is the common will to tackle this issue. Turkey has been left alone in recent years," he said.

It looks like Turkey will, understandably, start demanding various concessions.

Restarting accession talks is one of the conditions Turkey presented last week to agree to a common action plan with the EU to tackle the migrant crisis.

The action plan includes measures to strengthen the control of Turkey's border with the EU and facilitate returns of unwanted migrants to Turkey, as well as aids to help Turkey handle the 2.5 million refugees living on its territory.

Turkey also demanded a liberalisation of the visa regime in 2016 for Turks coming to the EU, a €3 billion aid package and a participation of Turkish leaders in EU summits.

Another of the EU's neighbour is becoming restive. Though smaller than Turkey, Switzerland has greater clout in the world or did have before Turkey had become vital to Europe's safety (not for the first time).

Sunday's national parliament election in Switzerland may not be quite as important as it sounds, given the country's political structure but is indicative of attitudes.

The anti-immigration Swiss People's Party (SVP) won the biggest share of the vote in Sunday's national parliamentary election (18 October), projections showed, keeping pressure on Bern to introduce quotas on people moving from the European Union.

Success for the Swiss People's Party (SVP), coupled with gains made by the pro-business Liberal Party (FDP), led political commentators to talk of a "Rechtsrutsch" - a "slide to the right" - in Swiss politics.

Immigration was the central topic for voters amid a rush of asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe.

"The vote was clear," SVP leader Toni Brunner told Swiss television. "The people are worried about mass migration to Europe."

Sunday's result cements the SVP's position as the dominant force in Swiss politics.

The SVP won 29.5% of the vote, according to projections from Swiss broadcaster SRF, up from 26.6% in the 2011 vote and far exceeding expectations.

This would translate into an extra 11 seats, bringing their total tally in the 200-member lower house to 65, the best result for any party in at least a century.

The election gains for the SVP, which was already Switzerland's biggest single party, come 20 months after the Swiss in a referendum backed limits on foreigners living in the Alpine nation. The SVP had strongly supported the restrictions.

Lawmakers have until 2017 to reconcile this referendum result with an EU pact that guarantees the free movement of workers, otherwise the Swiss government must write quotas into law regardless of any compromise with the EU.

Turkey can be bribed or blackmailed but Switzerland is a tougher proposition. EUObserver gives more details:

The centre-left social democrats came second in the election with 18.9 percent, which was only a 0.2 percentage point increase. But with the centre-right Liberal Party (FDP) in third place, a clear right-wing majority has emerged in the National Council.

Several newspapers in neighbouring Germany therefore spoke of a "Rechtsrutsch", a swing to the right.

However, Neue Zuercher Zeitung (NZZ) said it was rather a "return to normality".

In an editorial commentary, the NZZ noted that "a win of several percentage points is hardly a landslide" and that while two right-wing parties now have a majority, they are no homogeneous block but have differing views.

"[The term] 'Rechtsrutsch', like 'asylum chaos', is a part of the vocabulary of fear", the paper noted.

The NZZ is correct: hysteria does not help anyone and this result is not frightening to anyone except the Europhiliac establishment. You see, none of this was supposed to happen.

The Swiss are different

Well, for one thing they have never bothered to be part of Europe or so I recall some stupid politician describing their action in rejecting the blandishments of the European Union. How a country that is right in the middle of Europe can be not part of it is a mystery that only a political mind can save.

Before we go any further with this story, which I expect most of my readers know already, here is a clip from a well known film that sums up the comments that have been emanating from Brussels and various europhiliac organizations:

 

As any fule kno, the cuckoo clock was actually invented in Germany but this is a great scene in a brilliant film.

Now for the story: the Swiss have voted narrowly in a referendum in favour of reintroducing quotas on immigration from the EU thus upsetting the previous agreement for freedom of movement and generally upsetting the EU (cannot be done too often, especially by a country like Switzerland).

In a nail-biting vote, 50.3 percent backed the "Stop mass immigration" initiative, which also won the required majority approval in more than half of Swiss cantons or regions, Swiss television said.

The outcome obliges the government to turn the initiative, spearheaded by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), into law within three years.

It reflects growing concern among the Swiss population that immigrants are eroding the nation's distinctive Alpine culture and contributing to rising rents, crowded transport and more crime.

Net immigration runs at around 70,000 people per year on average. Foreigners make up 23 percent of the population of 8 million, second in Europe only to Luxembourg.

"This is an enormously important decision because the direction must now be shifted," SVP politician Luzi Stamm told Swiss television. "The Swiss population have said that, instead of free movement of people, quotas have to be introduced."

What the EU would like to do now is to punish Switzerland in some hitherto unspecified fashion but that seems rather difficult. Switzerland, despite being outside the great EU, is a rich and powerful country and a magnet for many businesses, especially in those Cantons that sensibly kept their corporate tax level very low. Despite that fact, the threats have started:

"For us, EU-Swiss relations come as a package," said Hannes Swoboda, a member of the European Parliament. "If Switzerland suspends immigration from the EU, it will not be able to count on all the economic and trade benefits it is currently enjoying. We will not allow ... cherry-picking."

There are dire predictions that the Swiss will be made to vote again but that, too, seems unlikely as they are not and have never been part of the European Union, whose members can be made to vote often until they get the right result. And suppose, EU pressure prevails and another referendum is called on the subject in Switzerland? The most likely outcome of that will be an even bigger margin in favour of those quotas. Analysis on the BBC site tries to weigh up the possibilities:

So the Swiss have chosen to regain control over migration even though it risks undermining the relationship with Brussels. There will not just be quotas but also restrictions on the right of foreigners to bring in family members and access social services. Businesses must give Swiss nationals priority when hiring staff. There will be a new clause in the constitution stating that migration must serve the nation's economic interest.

Many of the precise details of the quotas have yet to be worked out and the current system will continue in the meantime. But all eyes will be on the reaction from Brussels. As the government in Switzerland admitted, "the new constitution runs contrary to the agreement on the free movement of people". It accepts that its relationship with the EU will have to be put on a new footing.

But it is not only Switzerland that is facing a few problems:

For Brussels there are no easy options. Free movement of people is one of its core principles. It sees it as integral to the single market. It has reminded the UK of this and if it embraces a compromise with the Swiss, other countries might chose to follow.

And yet European officials will also be aware that with the European elections pending in May, there will be many anti-establishment parties pushing for the same restrictions as the Swiss voted for. Brussels will believe it has to defend a core principle, yet it will also be aware of how strongly the immigration issue plays with voters.

Mind you, following Switzerland's example is not so easy for countries that are part of the European Union rather than just have a set of agreements with it but it will be interesting to see how the negotiations for a new relationship will shape up. Britain cannot emulate Switzerland - the situation is very different and we would have to bring about that Brexit first - but ideas for the future may well be picked up.

Whether UKIP will benefit from this in the forthcoming Euro elections is another matter.

What's in a name?

Should one refer to banking privacy or banking secrecy? One sounds rather attractive, the other evil, anti-communitarian, defiant and generally a bad thing. That is, of course, why the Swiss banking rules about clients' privacy are consistently described as banking secrecy, particularly when the industry and the country is being bullied by the United States and probably quite soon the European Union in the name of its members, who feel that people should not try to take money out of the various governments' rapacious hands.

For the time being, the Swiss are holding out and one cannot help wondering whether recent scandals around certain US institutions, such as the IRS, have not stiffened their resolve.

The news is that the lower house of the Swiss Parliament has "refused to debate a bill that would allow Swiss banks to pass client information to the US tax authorities". The Bill will now return to the Senate who had reluctantly passed it, after threats from the US that it "would indict Swiss banks, and possibly even cut them off from the dollar market" if its parliament disobeys instructions. The Swiss parliament will be rising this week for summer, so the Bill will not be discussed till the next session. If the lower house refuses to debate it again, it will die an unnatural death.

What then?

In January Switzerland's oldest private bank, Wegelin, closed after being indicted and fined $58m by the US authorities after admitting in court to helping American customers to hide more than $1.2bn from the Internal Revenue Service.

In 2009, Swiss bank UBS paid $780 million and handed over details of more than 4,000 accounts in order to avoid indictment.

That would be the Internal Revenue Service that is waging a losing fight to clear its own name and for whose abolition there are ever more calls in the United States. Let us not forget the European Union that is standing in the shadows, hoping to get a piece of the action.

Sensible but does not go far enough

The Swiss People's Party, which has acquired the sobriquet "far-right" though even Wikipedia describes it as "national conservative and right-wing populist" (pretty bad, really, unlike left-wing populist) takes a eurosceptic and anti-immigration line.

The party has also come up with the strong suggestion that Switzerland gives far too much in foreign aid.

The president of the Swiss People’s Party, Toni Brunner, expressed regret at the government's decision to increase development aid in an interview with newspaper SonntagsBlick.

The National Council has already approved a budget from 2013 to 2016 of 11.35 billion francs ($11.62 billion). This means that by 2015, 0.5 percent of Switzerland’s GDP would be spent on aid.

...

Brunner would prefer to set a constitutional percentage limit on the amount of aid set aside by Switzerland, as well as a sum that should not be exceeded. The party has not yet proposed any exact figures.

Given that foreign aid does little to help the people of developing countries but a great deal to help the bloodthirsty kleptocrats who are in power in those countries as well as subsidize armaments, nuclear weapons and attempts at space exploration, I should like to see a political party demand complete cessation of this evil practice.

I wouldn't call it a paradox

From The Trumpet. com about Switzerland, the article being entitled, Why Switzerland is Headed Right Into the Open Arms of Germany

Though small in geographic area and population, and surrounded by EU member nations, in their unique wisdom the Swiss refrained from joining the European Union. They have thus retained their national sovereignty and hence their own beloved sovereign means of exchange, the Swiss franc. Only eight months ago we cited an EU foreign ministry report that threatened the Swiss with either conforming to EU law or risk being shut out of EU markets: “Switzerland’s current relationship with the EU has ‘clearly reached its limits’ and has to change, the report says. Switzerland cooperates with the EU on a case-by-case basis, resulting in a series of over 120 agreements that give Switzerland similar access to the European Union as an EU member.” The Swiss tenaciously stuck to their guns. The paradox is, having taken that decision, the Swiss are riding on the crest of the waves of today’s economically rough seas, while the rest of Europe is in the trough.

What a difference eight months can make. As Europe bites its financial finger nails, the Swiss remain confident of their fiscal position. “The Swiss economy is growing, unemployment is low and our country has little debt compared with other countries. We see neither deflation nor inflation risks at the moment. The national bank does not need to act,” stated Philipp Hildebrand, chairman of the Swiss National Bank, last month.

Then again, I don't get the impression that the author thinks it is really a paradox.

He does, however, think for reasons that are not explained as coherently as one would wish and are shot through with apocalyptic predictions that for one reason and another, not least because of her financial success, Switzerland's independence is a thing of the past or, at least, soon will be a thing of the past, which is now the present. Germany will control the country, just as it (allegedly) controls all of Europe now. Oddly enough, the Germans do not seem to think so. Instead, they bemoan the fact that their government cannot protect them from having to bail out endless losers. But what do they know?

Outrageous! This must stop!

By this I mean the people of Switzerland insisting that they must have some say in major policy decisions. Outrageous! How very dare they? This is, as some readers must have worked out, about the latest referendum in Switzerland in which 52.9 per cent voted for automatic expulsion of foreign criminals from the country and 47.1 per cent voted against. Of the 26 cantons only 6 voted against. So, the people of Switzerland have spoken and is there an outrage!

AFP reports

Switzerland was slammed as the "black sheep" of Europe on Monday after voters endorsed a far-right push to automatically expel foreign residents convicted of certain crimes.

Slammed by whom, precisely? Well there is the Austrian news website, which accused the Swiss of voting against foreigners. Well, no, not exactly. The Swiss have no intention of deporting foreigners who live and work in their country. They do not, however, seem to like foreigners who go to their country and commit serious crimes. Shocking of them, I know, and against international law, according to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Really? International law says you must tolerate anyone and everyone who happens to want to commit murder or large-scale robbery or rape in your country?

The EU, according to the same AFP article, is fulminating. This is going against bilateral agreements that ensure freedom of movement. For criminals? I don't recall that right in the Treaties and is the EU not the organization that is insisting on every tighter Europe-wide controls to fight international crime? Ah yes, but the Swiss are interested in their own country. That is their great sin.

French newspapers are apparently in shock. As well they might be. France, after all, deports people swiftly and quietly without bothering to ask anyone about it or bothering to find out whether they had committed any crimes.

Not only the EU is fulminating but, as EUObserver points out

Human rights groups slammed the result, with Amnesty International saying the approval of this plan represents a ''dark day for human rights in Switzerland.''

The European Network Against Racism (ENAR), a Brussels-based umbrella organisation, said the vote is the "result of a xenophobic and discriminatory campaign launched by the populist Swiss People's Party, making dangerous amalgams between immigration and criminality."

A "second-class" category of Swiss residents will emerge, ENAR warns, which would be a "clear breach of the fundamental human rights principle of equality before the law."

The group also noted it was not clear where the limit would be set - first, second or even third or fourth generation immigrants.

Of course, third or fourth generation immigrants are not exactly immigrants but that, presumably, will be clarified in the legislation that has to follow the referendum. In the meantime, let us for a moment consider what all these tranzis are saying. They are calling on the Swiss government to ignore the people's vote in the name of some nebulous concept of international human rights. They are also saying that it is one's inalienable human right to go to another country and commit serious crimes there. Really?

As Alex Singleton says in his blog in the Daily Telegraph:

Amnesty’s reasoning is that deportations could cause convicts to be sent back to countries where they could face persecution. But this is a ridiculous argument: no one is forcing visitors to Switzerland to commit offences. If people don’t want to be sent back home, why don’t they just desist from rape, robbery, murder and fraud?

Obviously because even to make such a suggestion is to infringe their human rights.

Then there is the question of taxation. The Swiss do insist on having a say on that, as well.

Meanwhile, a proposal to impose a minimum tax on Switzerland's wealthiest citizens, which was also put for vote on Sunday, was rejected with 58.5 percent.

"The bad mood hits foreigners but not the rich," ran the headline in Der Bund of Bern. The Yes to the People's Party initiative showed that "questions of Swiss identity and culture, triggered by rapidly growing social change and migration, bother Swiss people like virtually nothing else."

As I suspected and as the Reuters Factbox explains the vote about taxation has to do with the cantons jealously protecting their rights to set taxation and to compete for those foreigners who come to the country with good intentions, i.e. to make money by undercutting each other's tax rates.

Need I say it? I am shocked, shocked.