Switzerland: Treaties with Schengen neighbours (feature)
01 May 1999
On 27 April, the Swiss Justice Minister signed two treaties with the Interior ministers of Germany and Austria, the last of four packages of bilateral Conventions between Switzerland and her four neighbouring countries - all of which are members of the Schengen group. The main areas covered in the Conventions are judicial cooperation, readmission agreements concerning third country nationals and, most importantly, police cooperation. Treaties with France and Italy were signed last year and were ratified by parliament in its April session.
Although Switzerland will stay outside the EU for the next few years and therefore will not accept freedom of movement for EU citizens, the main interest of the Justice Ministry (EJPD) is to bring the country in line with EU migration and asylum policies and the EU's standards of police cooperation. The results of the negotiation with the neighbouring countries are, however, by no means homogenous. This is, in part, a consequence of the fact, that previous treaties on judicial cooperation and on readmission have not been renewed.
Thus the readmission treaty with Austria stems from the 1950s. The readmission agreement with Germany, which dates from 1993, was the first of the "modern" agreements and was followed in 1998 by treaties with France and Italy. All three authorise a regulation which allows the deportation authorities to transfer the refugee who is being "readmitted" to the nearest airport of the respective EU country. Deportations, in the case of Switzerland, will no longer occur from Kloten or Cointrin, but, for example, through the Italian airport in Milan. Germany has already been practising deportations through Kloten for quite some time. One outcome of this practice is that the public protests, against taping or gagging, will be greatly reduced because of the secrecy of the event - unless there is a tragic death, as in the case of Khaled Abuzarifeh in Kloten on 3 March. A Memorandum of Understanding with Germany (December 1997), that preceded the convention on police cooperation signed on 27 April, clearly foresees "common repatriation contingents" of third country nationals and the "use of common charter flights".
The agreement with Italy was eagerly sought by the Swiss government because most asylum seekers come from the south to cross the Italian border into Switzerland. If agreement on repatriation issues are strictly enoforced the Swiss government would be able to cut its asylum budget. To reach agreement on the repatriation issue Switzerland had to compromise on judicial cooperation accepting, for the first time, rogatory letters relating to fiscal offences; this should stem the frequency with which Italian requests in mani pulite (the "clean hands" corruption scandal) cases were rejected. The new convention on judicial cooperation with Italy does not change material law, but enables a new conciliation procedure in difficult cases. The convention also regulates interrogation by video conference.
The conventions on police cooperation however, reveal not only the Swiss government's interest in being included in Schengen cooperation, but also the positions of its neighbours in the EU. The conventions negotiated with Germany and Austria include a system of automatic data exchange very similar to the Schengen Information System (SIS), which is not included in the treaties with France and Italy. The German and Austrian treaties go further than the existing regulations of the Schengen Implementation Agreement (SIA) on cross-border policing and cooperation.
The German Bundeskriminalamt (BKA, Federal Office of Crime Police), as well as the Austrian police headquarters - in practice the SIRENE bureaux - will be able to transfer data on wanted persons and objects to the Swiss Federal Office of Police Matters (BAP) and vice versa. The information transferred can be put on the respective national police computers for automatic access to the rest of the police<