February 8, 2009 - Switzerland's or Europe's Doomsday?
Fears are growing in Switzerland that the popular vote of February 8, 2009, concerning the bilateral accord on freedom of movement within the EU and Switzerland (which is not an EU member) will end in a NO.
When two weeks earlier, opinion polls showed a 55% YES majority, the margin is now down on 50% YES, 7% undecided and 43% NO.
What strikes the OSSERVATORE PROFANO most, is the complete blindness of the discussion within Switzerland for the effects of a NO on the EU itself. Isolationists
want to redraw the line between Switzerland and it's neighbours, they are convinced that the semi-permeability of the frontier between "Us" and "Them" will remain untouched by a NO and that all the options for negotiating whatever subject with the EU will even be greater than ever before, confounding the tolerance for negative votes of member states such as Ireland (whom the EU cannot afford to loose) or for the erratic behavior of some members in Eastern Europe with the situation of Switzerland, which is not a member and which is considered - not only in Europe - as a shameless profiteer.
What is most striking: the NZZ, in it's management of the "letters to the editor" page, appears to lean toward a NO, or at least unwilling to stem the tide.
What we must fear most, and much more than the reactions of EU towards Switzerland, is the stimulus for desintegration within the EU that is initiated by a Swiss NO on February 8, 2009. This country bears a heavy responsibility not only for it's own fate but for the fate of Europe too, and the price of a NO will be high for all of Europe.