The Swiss agreement is full of holes

The Swiss have voted in a referendum, not overwhelmingly but decisively, to sign up to both the Schengen and Dublin Agreements.

After the two no votes to the European Constitution, this is a clear indication that the European Union continues in its process of endless growth, no matter what. As we have argued before that is the only way it can survive.

The Swiss have in the past voted not to belong either to the European Union or to the European Economic Area. But that kind of thing has never stopped the political elite that is still clinging to the wreck of its ideas about European integration one day creating a European people.

The Schengen Treaty will make the Swiss dismantle their own extremely efficient border controls and submit to the less than efficient Schengen ones. (Unless, of course, they do what other member states do, which is drop in and out of the arrangement.)

As the BBC puts it somewhat fatuously:

“Schengen will allow Swiss police to share information with their EU colleagues about all sorts of crimes, from money-laundering to suspected terrorist organisations.

The Dublin accord, which has also been backed in the referendum, will give Switzerland access to Eurodac, the database which is supposed to prevent asylum-seekers making applications to more than one European country.”

Eurodac has had no effect whatsoever on the number of asylum seekers applying to as many countries as they would like and, presumably, the Swiss police has always been in the position to share information, should they wish to do so.

We are hoping to publish an article on the blog later on that will examine the whole development in detail. In the meantime, two points need to be noted.

The way is now open for the EU to try to impose some of the nannyish state control it so loves on the holding of guns in Switzerland.

And, of course, let’s face it, this referendum is not the end of the process. Very soon the Swiss government and political elite will start pointing out that having made the first step that wonderfully stubborn and independent country might as well go the whole hog and apply to join the European Union, no doubt, paying heavily for that privilege, economically as well as politically.

One can but hope that the Borg will deconstruct itself before that happens.