Trade relations Switzerland wants to resolve its dispute with the EU, the federal president paves the way for new talks: “Switzerland’s pressure to deepen relations with Europe is growing”

Switzerland wants to relaunch economic negotiations with the European Union, Federal President Ignazio Cassis tells the Swiss Sonntags Zeitung in an interview with the newspaper. According to the news agency Reuters.

“We are currently in the Federal Council defining a framework for a possible package or agenda for negotiations,” Cassis said in an article in the magazine on Saturday.

Cassis mentions electricity and energy as possible topics in the agreement. According to him, there are also opportunities for cooperation in the fields of health, research, media and culture.

Cassis became Swiss Federal President earlier this year. He is also the country’s foreign minister.

Negotiations The closer trade partnership between Switzerland and the EU failed in May last year when Switzerland left seven years of contract negotiations due to several disagreements.

Switzerland is not part of the EU or the European Economic Area (EEA). However, Switzerland has wide access to the EU internal market and complies with many EU regulations.

Economic relations between Switzerland and the EU are agreed in more than a hundred different agreements, the oldest of which date back to 1972. The problem is that the agreements threaten to become obsolete and must always be renegotiated.

Britannian Switzerland does not want to allow a situation like the EU gap to unfold. Cassis, a member of the Liberal Party, thinks Switzerland needs to move closer to the EU, the country’s largest trading partner.

“Switzerland’s pressure to deepen its relationship with Europe will increase as the EU is closest to us economically, ideologically and socially,” the federal president said, referring to global political tensions.

Cassis met with U.S. and Russian foreign ministers in Geneva in January as the countries tried unsuccessfully to negotiate the security situation in Europe.