THE TELEGRAPH: Swiss voters are to decide this weekend whether to open the country's borders to Romania and Bulgaria amid a racially-charged political debate.
Posters showing sinister black crows pecking away at a map of Switzerland have added controversy to Sunday's referendum on whether to extend the country's free movement agreement with European Union.
The stark imagery has been used by the right-wing Swiss People's Party, or Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP), in a repeat of the controversial racial imagery that made it Switzerland's largest political grouping during elections last year.
The latest SVP poster echoes its Oct 2008 campaign image which played on popular resentment of immigrants by showing a group of white sheep kicking a black sheep off a Swiss flag.
Alain Hauert, spokesman for the SVP, admitted that the black crow poster, captioned "Free passports for all? No", did aim to target popular fears of being swamped by mass immigration from Romania and Bulgaria, the EU's poorest countries.
"The enlargement of free movement to Romania and Bulgaria is a threat. Our unemployment is rising and our social insurance is under pressure.
Wages in Romania and Bulgaria are 15 times lower than here. Big companies will look for cheap labour from Romanians and Bulgarians and this is a real threat," he said.
Mr Hauert insisted that the black crows also represented Germany, Switzerland's big EU neighbour and Berlin's pressure on secretive Swiss banks to reveal the names of account holders to German tax inspectors.
"Germany is placing huge pressure on Swiss banks to give up personal data. That is a big problem for our country that the crows represent too," he said. "It has nothing to do with race."
The tide of Swiss public opinion might be turning against open borders with the EU. >>> By Bruno Waterfield | Wednesday, February 4, 2009
AFP: Swiss Weigh Up EU Immigration in High Stakes Vote
GENEVA — The Swiss voted Sunday in a high stakes referendum to decide whether or not to continue to freely allow in workers from the neighbouring European Union.
Polling booths were due to close at noon (1100 GMT) in the ballot on the Swiss government's attempt to prolong the accord with the EU on free movement of labour and to extend it to workers from the bloc's most recent members, Bulgaria and Romania.
Campaigning has pitted non-member Switzerland's economic interests against traditional popular fears about immigration and the neutral Alpine nation's prized independence.
But the fraught global economic climate, which has hit prosperous Switzerland in recent months, has added to the uncertainty, as the last opinion poll for Swiss television showed only a slender advance for a 'yes' vote.
Free movement since 2002 - which also allows Swiss residents in the EU to freely take up jobs there - is widely credited with helping fuel Switzerland's economic boom in recent years by helping to overcome a shortage of skilled labour.
Supporters, including the bulk of the Swiss political, business and social establishment have warned that a "no" vote could jeopardise those gains and a carefully nurtured though often tense relationship with the now 27 nation bloc.
Centre-right Radical Party politician Leonard Bender, a supporter of free movement, said that the current economic climate raised the stakes.
"It's not the right moment to make our position more fragile when cooperation with the European Union has been so fruitful," he told AFP.
But opponents led by the hard right Swiss People's Party (SVP) appear to have captured the mood of many voters by whipping up fears about Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants and a threat to Swiss jobs. >>> © AFP | Sunday, February 8, 2009
BBC: Swiss to Extend EU Worker Access
The people of Switzerland have voted to continue allowing in workers from the EU and to extend access to two new member states, Romania and Bulgaria.
Official referendum results showed that almost 60% of voters had supported the proposal.
Right-wing politicians had warned that extending access could bring an influx of cheap labour at a time of recession.
Switzerland remains outside the EU - but its political and economic ties to Europe are very close.
The BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Berne said that a "no" to free movement could have put that relationship at risk.
Since the Swiss first introduced free movement of labour the number of EU citizens working in Switzerland has risen to over a million.
Supporters of the government proposal to extend access said that free movement rules had helped attract skilled workers to Switzerland. [Source: BBC] | Sunday, February 8, 2009
BBC:
Swiss Votes on EU Worker Rights >>> By Imogen Foulkes, BBC News, Berne | Sunday, February 8, 2009
BBC:
Switzerland Opens Its Borders >>> By Imogen Foulkes, BBC News, Geneva | Friday, December 12, 2008
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