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Report nowThe Council of States wanted to clarify whether a majority of the cantons is required for EU treaties. Instead, it spent an hour arguing about itself and then shelved the debate for the time being.
At stake is nothing less than the future of relations between Switzerland and the EU.
But anyone who followed Thursday’s debate in the Council of States heard one thing above all else: accusations of gross misconduct, warnings of an institutional crisis, and complaints about the National Council being disregarded. For over an hour, the smaller chamber did not debate the EU treaties, but rather its own procedures and the question of who should be responsible for what.
The agenda actually included a motion calling for a constitutional amendment regarding the Bilateral Agreements III. The result: the people and the cantons would have to vote on the treaty package; a “yes” vote by the people alone would not suffice.
This so-called “majority of the cantons” is politically explosive. It would give the small, conservative cantons significant weight—and they are more critical of the EU. The lines are drawn accordingly: opponents of the treaty package demand a majority of the cantons, while supporters reject it. Legally, both positions are defensible; politically, they certainly are.
Instead of clarifying this fundamental issue, the Council became entangled in procedural matters. The reason: Daniel Fässler (Center/AI) sought to remove the matter from the agenda via a point of order, arguing that the National Council committee had already approved the initiative, and the rest was a matter for the committee.
Daniel Jositsch, a Zurich member of the Council of States who is now independent, countered that the Political Institutions Committee was not responsible for the EU package at all; that fell under the purview of the foreign policy committee. And Andrea Caroni (FDP/AR) noted that “probably for the first time in parliamentary history,” two committees had dealt with the same motion.
The dispute has a simple reason: the foreign policy committee members are more favorably disposed toward the Bilateral Agreements III than the constitutional affairs committee members. Which committee handles the dossier can therefore help determine the outcome.
Or to put it another way: The battle over the EU treaties begins before the actual debate has even started. The irony is that the Council of States itself had only added the topic to the agenda at the last minute to resolve the issue before the vote on “10-Million Switzerland.” Now it has backtracked and sent the bill back to the Political Institutions Committee.
Just how hard to swallow this exercise was—even for insiders—was evident in Caroni’s attempt to summarize the current state of affairs: “The SPK-S, the WAK-S, and the SPK-N have, in principle, spoken out in favor of a constitutional basis. The two APKs have spoken out against it. The National Council Bureau believes, and has always believed, that the APK-N is responsible for this initiative, and the Council of States Bureau has gracefully refrained from taking a position and left the next steps to us.”
Anyone who could still follow that must be a lawyer (like Caroni).
Center Party Councilor Andrea Gmür-Schönenberger also warned during the debate about the public perception: “A complicated legal back-and-forth is neither understandable nor productive. This tug-of-war is simply not worthy of our councils.”
