Policy paper

UK-Switzerland Enhanced FTA Strategic Approach Chapter 2: Negotiating Objectives

Published 15 May 2023

This was published under the 2022 to 2024 Sunak Conservative government

For further information, see the full UK approach to negotiating an enhanced free trade agreement with Switzerland.

Overall objectives

• Pursue a comprehensive FTA with Switzerland that maintains and builds on current trading arrangements and secures additional benefits for businesses across the UK.
• Secure commercially meaningful access by removing tariffs and other barriers that limit our goods and services trade and impact investment activity, with the aim of creating jobs and boosting productivity and growth for the UK.
• Agree an FTA that works for all UK businesses, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and investors, facilitating greater choice and lower prices for UK producers and consumers.
• Create new opportunities by taking commitments across a range of new areas including services, investment, digital trade and environment.
• Work with Switzerland to promote sustainable international trade policy, particularly in areas of mutual interest such as green technology, sustainable finance and emerging technology.
• Provide lasting certainty and a predictable environment to give businesses the confidence to continue to trade and build on existing trade.
• Ensure high standards and protections for UK consumers and workers and build on our existing international obligations. We will not compromise on our high environmental and labour protections, public health, animal welfare and food standards, maintaining our right to regulate in the public interest.
• Uphold the government’s manifesto commitment that the NHS, its services, and the cost of medicines are not on the table. We will not accept any provisions that would increase the cost of medicines for the NHS. Protecting the NHS is a fundamental principle of our trade policy, and our commitment to this will not change during our negotiations with Switzerland.
• Secure an agreement which works for the whole of the UK and takes appropriate consideration of the UK’s constitutional arrangements and obligations.
• Ensure that we continue to draw on views from businesses, civil society, parliament and other stakeholders throughout negotiations to help shape the agreement’s outcomes.

Trade in services

• Create new opportunities and certainty of access for UK service exporters, building on the significant existing services trade between Switzerland and the UK.
• Pursue ambitious commitments that build on the UK and Switzerland’s existing terms of trade under the WTO and provide long-term certainty for UK services firms exporting to and operating in the Swiss market.
• Pursue commitments that ensure UK firms can compete on an equal footing when supplying services to Switzerland and that market access is not limited in the future, particularly for key UK exports such as financial services, legal services, research and development services, professional and business services, environmental services and transportation services.
• Pursue greater transparency of Swiss services regulation for all services sectors, as well as commitments to keep sector-specific rules and domestic regulation straightforward. This will ensure that Switzerland’s licensing and authorisation processes are transparent and streamlined, and remove unnecessary bureaucracy for services exporters to enter the Swiss market.
• Seek to support UK professionals’ ability to supply services in Switzerland through recognition of professional qualifications, while protecting UK standards and public safety and reflecting other ongoing dialogues with Switzerland.
• Provide long-term certainty for businesspersons to travel to and deliver services in Switzerland, building on the outcomes of the Services Mobility Agreement.
• We will continue to preserve the integrity of the UK’s domestic immigration system.

Public services

• Protect the right to regulate public services, including the NHS and public service broadcasters.
• Continue to ensure that decisions on how to run public services are made by UK.

Telecommunications

• Promote a liberal and competitive telecommunications market that minimises barriers and encourages more suppliers to trade with Switzerland.
• Ensure fair and non-discriminatory access to Swiss telecommunications networks and services and allow UK suppliers to invest and provide services in the market.

• Promote fair and transparent regulatory frameworks overseen by independent and impartial regulators to provide UK suppliers with the confidence to operate in this market.

• Secure greater connectivity for UK consumers and businesses in the Swiss telecommunications market through increased access to telecommunications services.

Digital trade

• Seek commitments that facilitate free and trusted cross-border data flows and prohibit unjustified data localisation providing certainty to business that they can enter and operate in markets without additional data storage costs.
• Maintain the UK’s high standards for personal data protection to ensure public trust in the flow of data, which promotes consumers’ engagement and participation in digital trade.
• Seek commitments to facilitate more efficient and secure international trade through use of digital technologies, including through paperless trading, which will reduce administrative barriers and transaction costs for business.
• Ensure customs duties are not imposed on electronic transmissions which keeps down costs for businesses and consumers.
• Cooperate on evolving areas of trade such as emerging technologies, data innovation, and environmentally sustainable digital trade to help support business adapt to future challenges and avoid a patchwork of different national rules and regulations which make trade and e-commerce more difficult.

Financial services

• Seek to agree ambitious and modern financial services provisions that will increase legal and regulatory certainty for firms and ensure fair treatment in line with the UK’s best precedent.
• Expand opportunities for UK financial services and ease frictions to cross-border trade and investment.
• Seek enhanced provisions that will technologically underpin and facilitate financial services trade, resolve unjustified restrictions including on data and address emerging issues.

Investment

• Agree provisions that create new opportunities for UK investors in Switzerland, whilst addressing existing barriers that investors currently face.
• Seek to lock in and build upon the market access provided to UK investors operating in Switzerland.
• Ensure the agreement does not contain an Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism.
• Maintain the UK’s right to regulate in the national interest and as the government has made clear, continue to protect the NHS.

Intellectual property

Protect the UK’s existing IP standards and secure provisions which:

• Achieve an effective balance between rewarding research and innovation, whilst reflecting wider public interests such as ensuring access to medicines.
• Ensure rights holders receive protection and fair remuneration for the use of their works abroad, whilst ensuring reasonable and fair access for consumers.
• Seek adequate protection for brands and design intensive goods, whilst keeping the market open to fair competition.
• Secure provisions that are consistent with the UK’s existing international obligations, including the European Patent Convention, which the UK is party to.
• Promote provisions that support accessible, transparent, effective, and efficient enforcement of IP rights, including in the digital environment, facilitate cross-border collaboration on IP matters and take account of emerging opportunities and challenges in the digital age.
• Seek effective protection of UK geographical indications in a way that ensures consumers are not mislead about the origins of goods while ensuring they have access to a range of products.

Trade in goods

• Secure improved access to the Swiss market through the liberalisation of remaining tariffs on UK agricultural goods and through the modernisation of goods-related provisions, including the removal of non-tariff barriers.

Rules of origin

• Maintain existing rules of origin provisions that allow materials and processing from EU countries to be recognised as originating in UK and Switzerland in goods traded between the 2 countries.
• Seek to further reduce administrative costs for businesses by having predictable and low-cost administrative arrangements, making it easier and cheaper to trade with Switzerland.

Customs and trade facilitation

• Secure commitments to transparent, predictable, and efficient customs procedures that help facilitate trade at the border.
• Promote the digitisation and automation of customs procedures to reduce administrative burdens for traders.
• Provide greater certainty for businesses by seeking to agree firm commitments for the release of goods.

Technical barriers to trade

• Continue to reduce technical barriers to trade by removing and preventing trade-restrictive measures in goods markets, while upholding the safety and quality of products and the UK’s right to regulate in this area in the public interest.
• Seek further opportunities to make it easier for UK manufacturers to have their products tested against Swiss rules.
• Promote the use of international standards to further facilitate trade between the parties.
• These commitments will complement the UK-Switzerland Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) on conformity assessment, signed in November 2022.

Sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS)

• Uphold the UK’s high standards of food safety, animal and plant health, and animal welfare, and the UK’s right to regulate in these areas in the public interest.
• Increase cooperation on the important issues of animal welfare and antimicrobial resistance, including through the development and promotion of best practice.
• Enhance access for UK agri-food goods to the Swiss market by seeking commitments for dialogue and transparency on sanitary and phytosanitary measures, with a view to helping UK firms trade more easily.

Good regulatory practice and regulatory cooperation

• Ensure commitments in the FTA do not undermine our regulatory systems nor the right to regulate in accordance with domestic rules and procedures to achieve public policy objectives (including public health, safety, and environment goals).

• Seek commitments in the enhanced FTA to the application of good regulatory practice to facilitate market access, improve trade flows, and further enable regulatory cooperation. This will build on existing alignment between the UK and Swiss regulatory policy systems.

Transparency

• Ensure appropriate levels of transparency between the UK and Switzerland, particularly with regard to the publication of measures affecting trade and investment, in order to support market openness and increase the ease of doing business.

• Ensure the agreement is as accessible and easy to use as possible, including encouraging digital means of publication and user-centre design principles where possible, in order to facilitate businesses taking full advantage of the benefits of the agreement.

Procurement

• Seek to maximise access for UK businesses to compete for procurements at all levels of government, based on clear and enforceable rules and standards.
• Seek rules to ensure that procurement processes are simple, fair, open, transparent and accessible to all potential suppliers in a way that supports and builds on commitments in the current UK-Switzerland agreement.
• Ensure appropriate protections remain in place for key public services such as NHS health and care services and broadcasting.

Competition

• Provide for effective competition law and regulatory enforcement that promotes open and fair competition for UK firms at home and in Switzerland.
• Provide for transparent competition laws, with strong procedural rights of action for businesses and people under investigation.
• Promote effective co-operation between enforcement agencies on competition matters.

Consumer protection

• Ensure core consumer rights are protected, such as protecting consumers from fraudulent and deceptive commercial practices.
• Promote effective co-operation between enforcement agencies on consumer protection matters.

Subsidies and state-owned enterprises (SOEs)

• Pursue subsidies provisions that promote open and fair competition for UK firms at home and in Switzerland.
• Pursue provisions which promote open and fair competition between state-owned enterprises and private businesses by preventing discrimination and unfair practices.
• Pursue transparency commitments on Swiss state-owned enterprises, to support UK competitiveness in the Swiss market.
• Ensure that UK state-owned enterprises, particularly those providing public services, can continue to operate as they do now.

Trade remedies

• Ensure provisions support market access, uphold our WTO commitments, and are underpinned by transparency, efficiency, impartiality, and proportionality.
• Agree provisions which facilitate trade liberalisation while protecting against unfair trading practices.

Dispute settlement

• Establish appropriate mechanisms that promote compliance with the agreement and seek to ensure that state to state disputes are dealt with consistently and fairly in a cost-effective, transparent, and timely manner whilst seeking predictability and certainty for businesses and stakeholders.

Small and medium-sized enterprises policy

• Seek dedicated SME provisions to facilitate cooperation and information-sharing between the UK and Switzerland to help small businesses navigate the requirements for exporting to each other’s markets.
• Seek commitments to provide online information resources to help small businesses navigate requirements for exporting to each other’s market.
• Seek to include provisions across the FTA that enhance cooperation between the UK and Switzerland on issues affecting SMEs. This will help SMEs make greater use of the opportunities under the FTA.

Environment and climate

• Ensure provisions that support and help further the government’s ambition on environment, climate change and achieve our shared goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, including collaborative commitments across a range of issues.
• Include provisions that promote trade and investment in environmentally and climate friendly goods and services.
• Maintain the UK’s right to regulate to meet environmental objectives, including on climate change. Affirm commitments to Multilateral Environmental Agreements such as the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement.
• Ensure that parties do not waive, derogate from or fail to enforce their domestic environment laws in ways that create an artificial competitive advantage.
• Apply appropriate mechanisms for the implementation, monitoring and dispute resolution of environment provisions.

Trade and development

• Seek to deliver an agreement that supports the government’s objectives on trade and development and promotes cooperation between the UK and Switzerland on trade and development activities.
• Seek to include provisions that address monitoring the impact of the FTA on developing countries outside the agreement.

Labour standards

• Reaffirm commitments to international labour standards.
• Provide assurance that parties will not waive or fail to enforce their domestic labour protections in ways that create an artificial competitive advantage.
• Include measures which allow the UK to protect our regulatory sovereignty, maintain the integrity, and provide meaningful protection, of the UK’s labour protections.
• Provide for appropriate mechanisms for the implementation, monitoring and dispute resolution of labour provisions.

Anti-corruption

• Provide for provisions that address the trade distorting effects of corruption on global trade, investment and fair competition to help maintain the UK’s high standards in this area.
• Provide for appropriate mechanisms for the implementation, monitoring and dispute resolution of anti-corruption provisions.

Trade and gender equality

• Promote women’s access to the full benefits and opportunities of this agreement, as workers, business owners, entrepreneurs and consumers.
• Seek cooperation to address the barriers which disproportionately affect women in trade.
• Recognise the importance of upholding existing domestic and international commitments on gender equality.

Innovation

• Strengthen collaboration on innovation and trade policy, to identify and respond to future challenges and opportunities, including in key innovative sectors such as life sciences, fintech, green tech, agritech and other industries with significant emerging technologies.
• Future-proof the FTA by ensuring it can respond appropriately to future innovations and business models in a changing world.

General provisions

• Ensure flexibility for the government to protect legitimate domestic priorities by securing adequate general exceptions to the agreement.
• Provide for review of the operation of the agreement.
• Allow for the agreement to be amended when necessary, in support of mutual objectives.

Territorial application

• Ensure provision to apply the agreement to all 4 constituent nations of the UK, taking into account the effects of the Windsor Framework.
• Provide for coverage of the agreement to the Crown Dependencies and Gibraltar and Overseas Territories as appropriate.