The Malta Independent of Saturday 27 April 2013 published the regular column of David Casa MEP about the decision of the Swiss Government (Swiss Federal Council) to activate the so called safeguard clause allowing the Swiss to implement temporary restrictions regarding the Free Movement of Persons agreement between the EU and Switzerland. So far so good. I do not intend to go into the question if this is a good or bad decision, although personally, I find it to be an unfortunate one.

What needs to be corrected is the last part of David Casa's column, where he writes"...The Swiss Federal Council [the Swiss Government] is aware that these restrictions can only be used as a short-term measure. It is therefore planning to hold two referendums on immigration in the future to provide a long-term solution to the immigration issue."

This is wrong, and misleads readers not familiar with the political system of direct democracy in Switzerland. It gives the impression, that the Swiss Government has a problem with the Free Movement of Persons and is therefore initiating these referenda. Not at all... I think I am not wrong when I believe that the Swiss Government has called for the safeguard clause mainly in order to calm down the excitement which will be created by the upcoming campaigning between supporters and opponents of the referenda. These referenda need to be held by constitution because 100,000 or more signatures of Swiss Citizens of voting age have been collected in a so called peoples' initiative, forcing government and parliament to call the people to the polls to decide if they want to accept the initiative, for which mainly the Swiss People Party with its - in my personal opinion - populistic and scaremongering right-wing tendency, has collected enough signatures. Both, government and parliament in its majority are not happy with these initiatives and recommend to vote against them. Let's hope the Swiss voters (who are the sovereign) will follow the government and the parliament.

Ueli Barfuss

Swieqi