The Swiss are preparing for the EU chill after leaving talks to enter the market

There was shock and rage in Brussels. In Switzerland, a quiet celebration and relief, but, for some, doubts about what’s to come.

On Wednesday, Bern formally announced it withdrawal from negotiations Codifying future relations with the EU in a single general “framework agreement” – a back-and-forth exchange that has prevailed in increasingly close relations with Brussels since 2014.

“You would never sign a contract like this in business,” said Philip Erzinger, head of a campaign team at Kompass Europe against the framework agreement. “He was one-sided. It would be a direct intervention in the Swiss system of direct democracy and cantons, which required us to adopt EU law without any mechanism to say no. “

It was time for opponents of the process Equal to the UK referendum to end up being a member of the bloc – a kind of Swexit.

There are parallels. Switzerland has never been to the EU and in a 1992 referendum denied membership in the European Economic Area.

However, through 120 bilateral agreements, it has almost full access to the EU internal market and is a member of the passport-free travel area. It is also highly aligned with the surrounding bloc on a wide range of economic and legal issues.

However, without a framework agreement the EU will not update or renew bilateral agreements when it changes its rules. As a result, the Swiss will gradually lose access, creating uncertainty for businesses and residents.

Switzerland is the fourth largest trading partner in the EU. More than 1.4 million people in the EU and the UK live in Switzerland. According to customs authorities, every day 330,000 people cross the Swiss land border.

The decision was a huge victory for the Swiss right-wing populist party, the SVP, which has long campaigned against Switzerland against Brussels.

For the most part, however, on Thursday morning in Switzerland, unlike in Britain five years ago, a political earthquake had just occurred.

“To be honest, I still don’t have a sense of the direct consequences of our business,” said Hugo Roppel, CEO of Geneva Logistics Group, a Swiss carrier in Geneva. “The most rational thing would be to say that we need Europe and that Europe needs Switzerland. . . I think it’s necessary to take a moment to calm everyone down and then negotiations can start again. “

According to Martin Janssen, CEO of the financial software company Ecofin in Zurich, Switzerland “needs to be different”. The framework agreement did not provide for this, he said.

After seven years of diplomatic frustration, many Swiss are happy with the opportunity to move forward.

The country’s largest newspapers offered lukewarm support for the federal council movement. “Despite all the sympathy [one might have] Overcoming the narrow national borders that have caused many wars in Europe, it is not necessary for Brussels to sign everything it wants, ”Tages-Anzeiger wrote in a left-wing editorial in an editorial.

Lukas Golder, president of the Swiss GFS Bern poll, said this attitude is probably common for most Swiss.

He said there was widespread support for close relations with the EU, but he was thought to be giving too much. Many Swiss are also optimistic that Brussels will reach Bern’s Plan B – the so-called “bilateral path” – so that existing agreements can be translated one by one.

“People think that Switzerland was too weak in its position vis-à-vis the EU. But there are probably too many high hopes for alternatives,” Golder said.

Erzinger, a campaign against the framework agreement, said the EU would eventually return to the negotiating table. Meanwhile, Switzerland “should endure a period of frost when you feel the chill in Brussels,” he said. But unlike Brexit, it would be able to fall into “agreements that allow it to breathe and not panic”.

Diplomats warn that this optimism is out of place. The general intention to seek a single “framework agreement” with the EU was to reduce as many of the country’s privileges as possible or to make concessions to maintain them.

Already, some decisive agreements are suffering an immediate collapse as the guillotine clauses come into force. A sign that this could be serious, the Swiss federal council said on Thursday that in its statement it had already begun taking precautionary measures, such as the storage of medical equipment.

Avenir Suisse, European Union think tank in Zurich, calculated the repeal of the Swiss-EU agreements on medical equipment, industrial machinery, chemicals and pharmaceuticals would impose a single cost of $ 1.7 billion ($ 1.9 million) and would be repeated to Swiss companies in these sectors.

Swiss researcher Teresa Hug Alonso Avenir said the federal council, which works by consensus, has not presented the Swiss with the potential disadvantages of rejecting the framework agreement.

He said the negotiation was ended for political reasons of the party, rather than for lack of public support. However, recent polls suggested that the referendum on the framework agreement would be passed with a 60 per cent support.

The SVP is clearly the only political party against the EU, but others in Europe are not in doubt. The Social Democrats, for example, spoke out against measures that would erode the protection of Swiss workers ’wages and the issue turned red.

Switzerland now has the potential to gradually degrade its economic ties with the EU. But it would not be a disaster for one of the richest countries in the world, Hug Alonso admitted.

“We’re not talking about massive changes. It is wear and tear. That is a problem. It does not push Switzerland to enter into new negotiations with the EU. “

Additional report by Domitille Alain in Paris

This article has been amended to correct the date of the 2016 UK referendum result