In a recently published survey done by gfs.bern, 60% were in favour the institutional agreement between Switzerland and the EU.

The most popular reason for supporting the agreement is the economic certainty voters think it would bring.

However, support for the agreement was fairly luke warm. Only 17% were strongly in favour of it compared to 15% who were strongly against it. It was the 43% somewhat in favour compared to the only 20% who were fairly against it that really tipped the balance in favour of the deal. A further 5% either don’t know or didn’t answer.

The most popular reasons for supporting the deal were economic security (69%), access to the EU market (65%), the bilateral agreements will become outdated (64%), Switzerland will become a less attractive business location without it (57%) and avoiding painful EU sanctions (58%).

The most popular arguments against the deal were limits on wage protection (62%), losing control to the EU (52%), a better deal could be negotiated (51%), EU citizens will get faster access to Swiss welfare (51%) and being subordinate to the European Court of Justice (47%).

More German speakers (39%) were against the deal than French (22%) and Italian speakers (17%).

The framework agreement aims to further formalise Swiss-EU relations. It would cover existing agreements on free movement of people, mutual recognition of industrial standards, agricultural products, air transport and land transport, along with equivalence for Switzerland’s financial services sector. In addition, it would aim to automatically update Swiss rules in these areas to keep them in line with EU ones while still giving the European Court of Justice (ECJ) a say in how to interpret law. Ongoing talks to agree it started in 2014.

A total of 2,000 Swiss voters were surveyed between 4 February and 9 March 2019.

More on this:
gfs.bern survey (in German)

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