importance of the so-called safeguard clause that will limit immigration in certain cases<\/a>. Jans says the clause offers flexibility and preserves Switzerland\u2019s ability to act.<\/p>\n\u201cIf the British had achieved this, there would have been no Brexit,\u201d Jans said.<\/p>\n
As a reminder, the safeguard clause is intended to limit immigration from EU countries into Switzerland to protect the labour market and the country\u2019s social welfare system in the event of a sudden rise of new arrivals from one of the European Union countries. (The same rules apply to other EFTA nations \u2014 Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein).<\/p>\n
During recent negotiations between Switzerland and the EU, however, this provision caused a protracted tug-of-war, with the Swiss insisting on keeping the law intact, while officials in Brussels saying\u00a0the provision went \u201ca step too far\u201d.<\/p>\n
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At the conclusion of the latest round of negotiations, the two sides agreed that Switzerland could maintain this clause, but lose the ability to activate it unilaterally; under the new terms, Bern would have to involve Brussels in this decision.<\/p>\n
But Jans also stressed the new clause was more effective than the current one and that immigration could be limited without losing access to the EU single market.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur chief negotiator Patric Franzen would be knighted in England for this \u2013 he and the entire negotiating delegation have done an excellent job,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Swiss voters will have the final say on the EU deal in a future referendum, although no date has been set for the vote.<\/p>\n
READ ALSO: How Switzerland wants to restrict immigration from the EU under new deal<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the British had had a Swiss-like “safeguard clause” with the EU to put a brake on immigration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-189003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114693117654961337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}