In Switzerland, we will have to accept to be Europeans

Federal advisers Guy Parmelin and Karine Keller-Sutter. Press conference, Bern, August 7, 2025.Image: KEYSTONE

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While politics, in Bern, promises to be bloody after the camouflet inflicted by the United States on customs duties, the Swiss face their identity demons.

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Fortunately, the negotiations between the Confederation and the European Union are completed! Imagine that this is not the case: Brussels would have a game of invoking Donald Trump’s modeling behavior towards Switzerland to be less ready for compromise on certain provisions of bilateral III. “See as he treats you, don’t be so difficult with us!” We would hear today.

With the UDC, the bigger it is, the more it goes

Sharely rushing out the popular expression “the bigger it is, the more it happens”, the UDC rushes on the European ground by virtue of another expression of circumstance: “The best defense is the attack.”

It would not be the lonely path, the famous “Alleingang” promoted for almost 40 years by the nationalist party, or even the latter’s fellow confidence in Donald Trump, which would partly explain the 39% customs duties inflicted on Swiss exports. No, it would be the fault of a handful of federal trainers, who would have sabotaged negotiations with the United States to promote rapprochement with Europe.

Our sister America

The UDC is caught in the act of making an alternative truth. Except that it will probably work. Against evidence: do we imagine federal ministers plotting against America to the detriment of millions of Swiss employees?

But the UDC is not alone in question. She is even a slightly too obvious scapegoat. The problem is us. Culturally, financially, linguistically, we made Switzerland a small sister’s sister America. For what? Because we are afraid, because we do not trust ourselves.

Apart from Coop and Migros

This American flight forward is explained by many more or less buried reasons. Reasons related to our confederal identity. America with its abundant series and its business models would be this substitution cement capable of holding the Swiss together, where the greater would not bring them together, apart from the coop and the Migros.

Reasons related to our nearby environment, then. America is a way to flee Europe, to emancipate it, to deny it. Being European, you think is to find yourself in the situation of the “small” held for negligible quantity by the old powers: France, Germany, who knows, Austria. And then, Europe is the show of problems which seem insoluble – foreign crime, uncontrolled immigration – which we imagine being more sheltered than these poor Europeans … The Porrentruy swimming pool affair “prohibited to the French” says all the torment that this proximity of Europe causes us.

Vendetta

However, we will now have to accept to be Europeans. There is no shame for that. In the bilateral file III, we are not talking here about membership of the European Union, the latter has been much more respectful of Switzerland than the United States of Donald Trump.

In the immediate future, because the blow to Switzerland by Washington is what we called a Pearl Harbor on Monday, Swiss politics promises to be bloody, as the loss of bearings is great and the search for culprits has the taste of the vendetta.

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