During a visit to Paris, President Ignazio Cassis succeeded in getting Switzerland’s voice heard again at the highest level. The war in Ukraine seems to have made the French forget their grudges over the Rafale deal.
French President Emmanuel Macron received Federal Councilor Ignazio Cassis in Paris on Friday
Swiss politics rarely makes headlines in France. And if so, then usually with things that, at best, are met with amusement in France. The reports are often misunderstood, most recently about Bern’s refusal to allow Germany to pass on cheetah ammunition to Ukraine.
In the past year there were also two issues that turned from misunderstanding to anger and had a lasting negative impact on bilateral relations: the break-up of negotiations on the EU framework agreement and Switzerland’s decision to give preference to American fighter jets to French ones.
Forward in the tax dispute?
Efforts by the Swiss side to explain themselves and mitigate the affront have since fallen on deaf ears in Paris. There have also been no ministerial meetings since the summer of 2021.
But apparently Ignazio Cassis has now been able to thaw the ice. The Federal President has been invited by the French President to the Paris Peace Forum, which will take place in the French capital on Friday and Saturday. Macron also took the time to speak with Cassis ahead of dinner with other leaders. The conversation lasted a little more than 30 minutes in a very cordial atmosphere, said the Federal President shortly afterwards.
After the Ice Age there were topics at the highest level – Cassis preferred the word resentment – enough. And apparently the somewhat difficult areas were at least briefly addressed. According to Cassis, however, the two presidents agreed that the blocked relationship urgently needed to be normalized in view of the changed geopolitical situation.
In the bilateral relationship, the dispute over the taxation of cross-border commuters, who have been working from home more and more since the pandemic, is probably the most pressing. France is insisting that a new regulation be found to distribute tax revenue more fairly and recently threatened to only accept the interim solution found in the pandemic until the end of the year. They want to solve this matter now, said Cassis.
The Federal President also claims to have sensed an authentic interest on the part of his counterpart in unblocking relations between the EU and Switzerland and getting out of the lose-lose situation.
The Federal President did not go into detail; more interest in the Swiss position is probably the maximum that Bern can expect. Because Emmanuel Macron had made it clear at the beginning of his first term in office that he did not have much time for Switzerland’s “cherry picking” strategy in European politics.
Prague was a stage for Paris
Cassis and Macron had already met at the founding meeting of the European Political Community in Prague in early October and had also talked there for around 30 minutes. According to Cassis, Switzerland’s participation in the initiative devised by Macron was a decisive step towards bringing relations with France back to “courant normal”: “Without Prague, I probably wouldn’t be here today,” he said.
Cassis also invited Macron to a state visit to Switzerland on Friday. In principle, Macron reacted positively, but a commitment is still pending, he said. A trip by the President of Switzerland to Switzerland might also be worth a few lines to the French media.