Switzerland's Answer to Silicon Valley
credit-suisse.com
credit-suisse.com
says the Swiss bank of Switzerland, the country that has closed its boarders. Last week's immigration referendum has certainly closed any hopes of Switzerland benefiting from a diversified, thriving tech industry. Europeans will go to London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, etc before going to Switzerland.
Since the referendum was accepted (though with a really thin majority of 50.3 %) it will force Switzerland to renegotiate the treaty with the EU, which in fact already suspended further negotiations with Switzerland by itself.
Immigration of qualified workers will still be possible and encouraged by Switzerland, though. I think the main motivation behind the referendum was the fear of "Überfremdung" (foreign infiltration), which is probably not entirely irrational with currently 25 % of people living in Switzerland being of foreign origin. So I think one should not overreact here.
[1] https://www.bfm.admin.ch/content/bfm/en/home/themen/fza_schw...
[2] http://www.bsv.admin.ch/soziale_sicherheit/index.html?lang=e...
Even the politicians in favor of the proposal immediately started asking for big quotas for their regions, so as not to hurt the economy - the irony...
So I'm not quite sure what will happen and the EU seems quite pissed about it (and rightly so), but looking at the tiny majority (50.3%) and the numerous lies during the campaign ("no, the EU won't do anything about it if it gets accepted"), I'm pretty confident this will either result in a law with no effect or we'll have to vote again to choose if we want to continue working with the EU or not.
i also see the irony from within. additionally, switzerland, of all the european countries, is the one which has one of the lowest levels of immigration (both legal and illegal). i think an inexistent paranoia took over many of the no so educated voters.
personally, i think the EU's stand needs to be tough, just make that 50.3% realise that what a mistake they've done. legislation won't go through until the summer, so lets hope much of the absurdity is not passed.
"Switzerland and Australia, with about a quarter of their population born outside the country, are the two countries with the highest proportion of immigrants in the world"
There are some more numbers here: http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/en/index/themen/01/07/bla... 23% of Switzerland's population are not Swiss citizens, and Germany+Italy+Portugal+France account for about half of that.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9618000/...
Actually, it has one of the highest levels of immigration in Europe, after Monaco, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-bo...
This will most certainly not happen. Instead, it will backfire. If the EU refuses a pragmatic and goal-oriented debate out of principle, it will only damage its reputation further and strengthen the anti-EU sentiment.
They voted, they had right to vote how they voted, just don't be surprised if that decision has some other consequences they won't like.
Switzerland is NOT part of the European Union Customs Union. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Customs_Union for further information.
Etc.
And there is not the whole package up for renegotiation, only 7 of 100+ bilateral agreements between the EU and Switzerland.
So, if Swiss want to change the part about immigration, it is obvious UE will have to change also the other parts (if not just trashing the whole treat)
From a spaniard.
I bet that soon enough we will vote again about measures to fix this vote.
The Swiss people have voted against unregulated mass immigration from the European Union in a democratic referendum. That was basically the system until 2007 and is the default system for immigration outside the European Union. The US for example has not even unregulated mass immigration for Canadians …
The biggest problem is, as the article gently suggests, housing, which is almost impossible for foreigners to find (even with asset sheets in the hundreds of thousands of USD). Affordable housing is essentially nonexistent. Every now and then voter initiatives crop up to change the situation (remove building restrictions, reduce bureaucracy, etc.), but the problem only seems to get worse.
Fortunately, an all-Switzerland unlimited travel card is only ~$4k/year for adults and ~$3k/year for <25yo's. Given the reliability and extensive reach of the public transport network here, it's definitely possible (and even fairly regular) to live in somewhat 'remote' villages and towns and still commute to work in <1hr. It's pretty cool to have the ability to live in, say, Saint-Maurice (with Bronze Age roots) and still be in the door at work within 1h15m.
This is made more palatable by the extensive fiber network available in Switzerland: multiple providers are now offering 1Gb/s connections in Lausanne proper, and the reach continues to expand. Some more-remote locations are still only served by the Swisscom state pseudomonopoly, but service is usually still reasonably cheap and line rates still reasonably high.
The mobile offerings here offer real competition, and along with the small size of the market, make cell service cheap and fast.
Finally, EPFL itself is highly ranked and has some top talent, not only in faculty (among others, includes Arjen Lenstra, Martin Odersky, Ed Bugnion, George Candea, and Katerina Argyraki), but also in PhD and MS students. EPFL also has regular workshops for entrepreneurship and actively encourages commercialization.
There's a lot of uncertainty about the new immigration mandate, which will almost certainly hurt Switzerland's attractiveness to entrepreneurs, but the ETH/EPF domain will probably not be affected; if you're a prospective graduate student interested in entrepreneurship, EPFL is definitely worth a look!
And a 1hr commute is a lot different stuck in traffic on the 680 or 101 than working on your laptop in a train.
I live ten minute cycle from work. Central Barcelona. OK, my apartment is small and expensive relative to wages, but I can't stand commuting. It really does seem like a waste of your life.
Now, if your target audience was people with asset sheets in hundreds of thousands of dollars then that's an entirely different story.
> EPFL is definitely worth a look
Fingers crossed :-)
Without access to the EU workforce, Swiss businesses have access to a workforce market of 8 million people.
It's possible Switzerland will cover some of the damage by pulling the money they would've contributed towards the EU research framework, and using it to increase domestic research funding instead. Will have to wait and see how that goes.
"Switzerland's contribution to the total budget of Horizon 2020 of about EUR 81.6 billion sums up to around CHF 4.4 billion, over a seven-year period. The corresponding budget appropriation was approved by the Federal Assembly on 10 September 2013."
http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/themen/01370/01683/index.html?lang=...
The only reason most of these people (myself included) don't speak out is that they have been schooled to be grateful for the fact that they have a job in a "developed" country. ["If you don't like it, just leave!"] Which is, admittedly, our situation -- so we STFU. It feels like one of those dreams when you want to open your mouth and scream...but no sound comes out.
I'd rather work in Switzerland any day, even with their proposed system (which is supposed to come into play after 3 years, and has quotas).