EU BLOW: How Switzerland WITHDREW EU membership bid before Brexit referendum

Last night, Prime Minister Theresa May was humiliated after EU leaders rejected her appeal for an extension until June 30. They offered to extend Article 50 until May 22, but only if Mrs May gets her deal through Parliament next week. The news has since been met with fury by a prominent number of exit campaigners, including Richard Tice, businessman and co-chair of the “Leave Means Leave” campaign, who described the decision as “disgraceful”.

He claimed Mrs May’s plan forces Parliament to choose between the UK being “slaves to the EU for decades” and extending “Article 50 for a long time in the hope we change our mind”.

The move was also condemned by Leave.EU, the unofficial Brexit campaign from 2016 closely linked to Ukip leader Nigel Farage.

The group said: “As expected, European leaders concoct yet another stitch-up in Brussels, once again kicking the can further down the road and our pathetically weak, submissive ‘leader’ graciously accepts.

“The battle is far from over.”

As uncertainty looms, newly-resurfaced reports might suggest the Brexit referendum campaign actually convinced Swiss politicians to withdraw its long-standing EU application.

The upper house of the Swiss parliament voted to invalidate its 1992 application to join the European Union, backing an earlier decision by the lower house, exactly a week before the UK voted to leave.

Swiss foreign minister Didier Burkhalter said the motion was “unnecessary” because Switzerland did not intend to join and should be considered an “independent sovereign nation”.

Other politicians argued that the vote was an unnecessarily formal procedure as Switzerland was no longer regarded by the EU as an official candidate to join the bloc.

However, Thomas Minder, counsellor of Schaffhausen state and an active promoter of the concept of ‘Swissness’, told Neue Zurcher Zeitung that he was eager to “close the topic fast and painlessly” as only a “few lunatics” may want to join the EU now.

Hannes Germann, also representing Schaffhausen, highlighted the symbolic importance of the vote, comparing it to Iceland’s decision to drop its membership bid in 2015.

He jokingly said at the time: “Iceland had the courage and withdrew the application for membership, so no volcano erupted.”

Switzerland has never been a member of EU but has accepted free trade with the union since the Seventies as well as accepting free movement of people as a member of the Schengen zone.

Four years ago the Swiss public voted in a referendum to impose immigration quotas but Brussels refused to grant the request, threatening to block its free trade access if it wanted to curb free movement.

Last week, it emerged that the country is gearing up to defy EU demands to abandon its arms-length relationship with the bloc in favour of much closer ties.

Eurocrats have deemed the traditional bilateral accords unacceptable, and in December 2018 gave Switzerland a six-month ultimatum, urging it to accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) as well as EU legislation with respect to migration, social security and other key policy areas.

However, the approach has angered many who have accused European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and colleagues of trying to bully the Swiss and lock them into a subservient relationship with the EU.

source: express.co.uk