Les Etats-Unis doutent d'un accord de libre-échange avec la Suisse
U.S. Trade Acts from a European, Swiss perspective
"Valid, yet moribund U.S. Treaties with EU States"
Swiss-US "Friendship, Reciprocal Establishments, Commerce and Extradition" treaty of 25 Nov 1850
Swiss-US "Reciprocal Trade" treaty of 9 Jan 1936 (valid til 31 Dec 1968; message & version française)
"Zum Bilateralen Vertragsnetz der Schweiz (inkl. EU-Staaten)"
"overall trade negotiating objectives of the United States for trade agreements"
Time-limits of Presidential authority "to enter into trade agreements with foreign countries"
"president's main responsibilities on trade were to collect the tariffs set by Congress and to negotiate bilateral Treaties of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation, which extended to treaty partners the most favorable tariff rates available."
QUELQUES  TRAITES  D'ACTUALITE CONCLUS PAR LA FRANCE
Les zones franches en Europe - Genève et les zones environnantes - Regio Genevensis
Interpellation Briner/Gutzwiller  Freihandelsabkommen mit den USA / Accord de libre-échange avec les Etats-Unis
Les projets libre-échangistes de Bush se heurtent à une farouche résistance. Bush, devant l’âpre résistance, cherche a conclure des traités avec de petits Etats. La Suisse s’intéresse – mais n’en a-t-elle pas déjà un depuis 1850?
"Senate Approves Central American Free Trade Pact" - one of the most hotly debated trade deals
"CAFTA Reflects Democrats' Shift From Trade Bills"
700 Jahrfeier der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft, Nationalratspräsident Bremi auf dem Rütli 1.8.1991

Geneva, 15 June 05 -  In the wake of the political Tsunami the French and Dutch citizens had unleashed on the European landscape, the Swiss vote on strengthening some bilateral links with the European Union provided some temporary relief. To interpret it as a vote of confidence for the EU's current design, structures and prospects would be a self-deluding mistake, further blocking the vision for exploring needed alternatives for the future of both Europe and Switzerland.  Some stock-taking thus seems to be in order.

    On its current track, isn't Europe risking to hit the wall both economically and politically? And if the Swiss model is worth preserving, can this be achieved by way of Switzerland associating itself still deeper with a fundamentally flawed structure, or by coming out as the de facto "54th State"?  By way of reanimating its world-wide network of forgotten but still valid friendship, commerce and establishment treaties - even at the risk of thus hammering another nail into the coffin of the European Union?  Or by becoming the "DC" of a European Confederation?

    Reflecting the sea-changes under way in Europe, the above questions are all but far-fetched.  They animate the political debate as never before at the grassroots level all across the country and beyond. With many a policy maker taken afoot with a useless political magnetic compass in his hands when in fact the political magnetic field he grew up with has simply disappeared. Many of them show difficulties admitting and adjusting to the new realities where gesticulations are less than ever before a helpful substitute for enlightened leadership.

    Tongue-in-cheek - some seek to escape the plain-levelling hassles emanating from bureaucrats in Brussels by playing softball with and into the hands of notorious flat-earth hardball players working out of Washington.  They even play with the idea of joining Uncle Sam, apparently expecting a return-elevator for services rendered as America's Trojan horse in Europe (e.g. in double-taxation, insider trading, money-laundering, Qualified Intermediary QI and other banking matters). Slightly more realistic - regardless of the resurging U.S. isolationism - but still far from helpful, is the gut reaction from some Swiss bankers, entrepreneurs and their political allies who, with a straight face, have called for strengthening the cross-atlantic bonds by way of a new free trade agreement which is supposed to prevent our exporters and service providers from being discriminated against by other competitors. Which, of course, could stir up things a little with "Brussels" and might keep busy some lawyers and officials here and there.  But would it also catch the imagination of true leaders and command respect among those who have a sense of history and actual undercurrents, as well as a vision for new horizons?

    Indeed, on the shelf of each Swiss policy and lawmaker, Switzerland's diplomatic patrimony is neatly collected and kept updated in all three national languages in what's called the Systematic Treaty Collection RS. Under number RS 0.142.113.361, one thus easily finds the founders of modern Switzerland, way back in 1850, to have first concluded with their American counterparts a still fully valid "Friendship, Reciprocal Establishments, Commerce and Extradition" treaty which, foremost, provides for national treatment and non-discrimination of each other's citizens in the other country.  Explicitly (art.I): they "shall be at liberty ... to manage their affairs, to exercise their profession, their industry and their commerce, to have establishments, to possess warehouses, to consign their products and their merchandise, and to sell them by wholesale or retail, either by themselves, or by such brokers or other agents as they may think proper ... No pecuniary or other more burdensome condition shall be imposed upon their residence or establishment, or upon the enjoyment of the above-mentioned rights than shall be imposed upon citizens of the country where they reside, nor any condition whatever, to which the latter shall not be subject." And (art.VIII and X): "In all that relates to the importation, exportation and transit of their respective products, the United States of America and the Swiss Confederation shall treat each other, reciprocally, as the most favored Nation", whereby "each of the contracting parties hereby engages not to grant any favor in commerce to any Nation, Union of Nations, State, or Society, which shall not immediately be enjoyed by the other party."  To be sure, these latter articles were formally abrogated in 1899, but continued to be applied autonomously by both sides, being essentially reinstalled with the US-Swiss commerce treaty of 1936 and the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

    Lacking typewriters, computers and copying machines, the authors of those old texts still had all the incentives to develop and apply the art of simplicity, flexibility and comprehensiveness. Thus, many a policymaker of today may draw inspiration and benefit from cleaning and looking into his own rear-mirrors on the near-by shelf - if his contributions to society are to become part of the solution, rather than of the problem.  True, U.S. lawmakers can bear heavily on U.S. foreign policy matters, particularly foreign commercial relations affecting their home turfs.  With the unique - and telling - exception of the Swiss-U.S. Treaty of 1850, support for free trade policies has thus been notably scarce among Republicans at least until the Reagan revolution - and it still is in a wide spectrum of U.S. society, contrary assertions during photo ops abroad notwithstanding. However, Switzerland still enjoys a strongly enrooted goodwill not least among U.S. lawmakers, as evidenced in the U.S. Congress' Joint Resolution "To commend the people and the sovereign confederation of the neutral nation of Switzerland for their contributions to freedom, international peace, and understanding on the occasion of the meeting between the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union on November 19-20, 1985, in Geneva, Switzerland." This goodwill might indeed be drawn on - of course not for reinventing, but for derusting, reactivating and bringing to bear such time-tested and mutually beneficial commerce clauses as those originally written into the 1850 treaty which sought to strengthen the individual citizen against the bureaucracy here and there.  Indeed, and as the recent debates and votations over the Treaty for a European Constitution have shown, there is one sure-fire recipe for citizen revolts: lack of focus on the essentials, administrative zeal and hassles, coupled with excessive attention by non-elected and non-constitutional lawmakers to matters and details which are better left to be decided by the citizens themselves, or by their local political councils.

    It remains to be seen whether this is a lesson shared by the powers that be in Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Washington, Berne and elsewhere. Notably in the cases of the recently rediscovered treaty-based and court-supported French free zones surrounding Geneva, the related Kaliningrad Oblast with its U.S. co-signed Memel Convention, and the Russian-Swiss Commerce treaty of 1872, all of which avail themselves for promising diplomatic initiatives based on imaginative use of forgotten treaties. And whether the politicians in these and other capitals will recognize the social, political and economic imperatives to develop and implement pro-growth and pro-enterprise - if not hassle-free - policies and administrative pilot regions, e.g. in and around Geneva, on the basis of the related Free Zones Treaties the French citizens, in extremis, have now saved from oblivion with their commendable verdict against the Eurocrats' self-serving constitution.  Which, of course, requires genuine leaders to look and grow beyond the excuses supplied by their subordinates for continuing on the worn-out tracks. They are called upon to live up to the unique opportunities handed to them by fed-up citizens everywhere.  And to take a new look at the joint oeuvre of Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann, as pointed at by General de Gaulle and Presidents François Mitterrand and Vaclav Havel in their visions about a European Confederation. In short: give Europe back to its only sovereigns, i.e. its citizens!