She does not willingly talk about her origins, that is not the question. Does not pronounce the names Kosovo or Bosnia, prefers to evoke a group which was once called Yugoslavia, which she left at the age of 3 with brothers, sisters and parents to flee the war. Twenty-seven years later, co-president for several months of the Operation Libero movement, Sanija Ameti is the most Europhile of the Swiss.
An omnipresent activist on the sets of German-speaking SF television, she is one of the few to dare to fight against the vision of the world “skinny”, she says, of the far-right octogenarian billionaire Christoph Blocher, still very influential, whose UDC party (Democratic Union of the Center) has imposed the theme of sovereignty in the country for a quarter of a century.
“Isolationism is a deadly illusion that ended up imposing itself as the expression of a supposed popular will. » Sanija Ameti
So much so that even the usual defenders of the European cause, such as the PLR (Liberal-Radical Party, right) and the Socialist Party, in theory won over to internationalism, ended up stopping caring about it. The European theme is so weak that the Federal Council (government) in Bern ended up pulling the plug. In May 2021, the Swiss unilaterally broke off negotiations with Brussels, to everyone’s amazement. Since then, the relationship has been brain dead.
Operation Libero has just launched a “Europe initiative”. The movement has eighteen months to collect 100,000 signatures. If successful, Bern would be obliged to consult the population on a relaunch of talks with Brussels. With this belief: “We are not rich despite Europe, but thanks to it. It’s like a building in which all the apartments around ours are well heated. Even without heating at home, we stay warm. »
Voluble, dry and snappy syntax
Which justly saddens Sanija Ameti, the first representative of this “sacrificed generation” of young working people is that, slowly, the link with the European Union is coming undone. Not renewed, the bilateral agreements lead to impasses. The Community research program Horizon is now inaccessible to Swiss researchers. And that’s just the beginning. Erosion will be slow, the wrong bend is taken.
“Populist propaganda has washed people’s minds, but it is not inevitable. Isolationism is a deadly illusion that ended up imposing itself as the expression of a supposed popular will. pleads the passion of Operation Libero. Founded in 2014, this movement sets itself the goal of defending all forms of liberalism. He was thus at the forefront of the campaign in favor of marriage for all during a recent popular vote.
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