Swiss Senate Hardens EU Deal Vote

Bern — After about twenty-four hours of debate, Switzerland’s Council of States — the forty-six-member upper house that represents the cantons — finished its first full pass over most of the Bilaterals III package of agreements with the European Union, approving the bulk of the domestic implementing laws while hardening the rules for how the country would vote on the deal.

The most consequential choice was the referendum design. The federal government (the Federal Council) had wanted an optional referendum: if opponents gathered enough signatures, a nationwide popular majority alone would decide. Senators instead voted 23 to 17, with three abstentions, for a mandatory “sui generis” referendum that also requires a majority of the cantons — the Ständemehr — even without first amending the constitution. They also advanced a related constitutional-amendment track aimed at locking in that double majority. Swissinfo, Le News, and Bluewin all reported the tally and the split: urban and French-speaking cantons largely opposed the cantonal majority; many smaller rural cantons supported it.

What Bilaterals III is

Switzerland is not an EU member. Since voters rejected the European Economic Area in 1992, Bern and Brussels have governed ties through bilateral treaties on free movement, trade, transport, and other fields. As EU law evolved, that patchwork grew harder to update. An earlier institutional framework deal collapsed in 2021. Bilaterals III, substantively negotiated by late 2024 and signed in March 2026, is the new attempt to stabilise single-market access with clearer rules on updating agreements, disputes, and state aid, while addressing Swiss worries about wages and immigration.

This week’s upper-house work covered large parts of that package — including cohesion funding commitments of about 3.3 billion Swiss francs, wage-protection compromises, a new state-aid monitor, land-transport implementation, and new food-safety and health-cooperation agreements — but not the electricity agreement, which senators are expected to take up in December. Nothing is final until the National Council (the larger, population-based chamber) acts, differences between the houses are resolved, and voters (under whatever referendum rule survives) have their say. A nationwide vote before the autumn 2027 federal elections remains possible if the timetable holds.

Why the double majority matters

Under a people-and-cantons rule, a package can win a majority of voters nationwide and still fail if enough small cantons vote no — a pattern that has historically hurt cities and French-speaking Switzerland in close votes, as Zurich senator Tiana Angelina Moser noted in debate. Supporters say Bilaterals III reaches so deep into Swiss law, courts, and cantonal powers that the higher bar is justified. The Federal Council still argues the legal threshold for a mandatory cantonal-majority referendum is not met. Immigration votes in the upper house also toughened the government line, including backing an immigration levy as a possible safeguard-clause tool and tighter rules on permanent residence for some EU nationals on welfare — changes Brussels and the Federal Council may yet contest as incompatible with free movement.

For readers outside Switzerland, the takeaway is simple: the path to locking in a long-negotiated EU–Swiss reset now runs through a harder referendum, a second chamber that may soften that choice, and an electricity chapter still to come.