Former socialist Federal Councilor Ruth Dreifuss is critical of the Federal Council on the European issue. The government is not showing “the leadership expected of it” on this issue and its “silence” is “embarrassing”, she declared in an interview published Friday in Le Temps.
Keystone
“At the time of bilaterals I and II, there was strong leadership from the Federal Council to have them accepted,” according to Ms. Dreifuss. “I wouldn’t say that I have the same impression today,” adds the woman who was federal councilor from 1993 to 2002 and head of the Federal Department of the Interior (DFI).
She says she “deeply regrets” this situation. The government “does not play its educational role” in the European file, she still believes.
“Hesitations about priorities”
Declassified on January 1, 2025, the minutes of the meetings of the Federal Council of the year 1994 show an executive prey to hesitations on Europe after the “no” in popular vote to the European Economic Area at the end of 1992, relates the newspaper. Then a member of the college, Ruth Dreifuss remembers a “period of particularly strong tensions” in the Federal Council.
The college had “a lot of hesitation about the priorities” to set in relations with Brussels and “about what should be resolved immediately or rather kept in hand for later negotiations,” relates the socialist. Unlike others, she judged, for example, that the question of Switzerland’s participation in the European research program was a “major priority”.
“Deafening silence”
Today, Ruth Dreifuss believes that “we have the same reasons as in 1994 to move closer to Europe, perhaps even more now”. According to them, “the oppositions remain virtually the same”.
She regrets the “deafening silence of the Federal Council” when, in May 2021, Ambassador Roberto Balzaretti, responsible for negotiating an agreement with Brussels, “tried to sell [le résultat de la négociation] to public opinion. To then explain the causes of the breakdown of negotiations, the silence of the government was “just as strong”, also believes Ms. Dreifuss. “Since then, I have not heard much more from the Federal Council,” she concludes, deploring an “awkward silence”.
