Swiss Politics...
One of the great parts about being an expat is you get a chance for a close up look at how a foreign country works. In particular, many ways independent Switzerland copes with being a part of the ever stronger EU dominated Western Europe. For those interested in Switzerland-EU politics, the following excerpt came today from the Swiss news website swissinfo.ch :
"Brussels wants the Swiss authorities to scrap a practice applied by some cantons that exempt company profits generated in EU countries from tax. It claims doing so violates a 1972 free trade accord.
Switzerland has repeatedly refused to negotiate with the EU over the issue. The government says that corporate taxes are a cantonal issue and are not covered by the trade agreement."
It goes on to say in the same article...
"In a parallel development, Calmy-Rey announced that the EU and Switzerland would open negotiations next month on connecting their power grids to secure supplies and prevent a repeat of the outage that plunged Italy in darkness four years ago.
Both sides want to strike a deal on power transmission fees that would make it easier for electricity operators to channel surplus energy to customers in another country.
Switzerland is ringed by EU member nations such as France, Germany and Italy that have few links to each other.
They are also seeking to harmonise power safety standards and agree to recognise each other's certification system for green energy."
"Brussels wants the Swiss authorities to scrap a practice applied by some cantons that exempt company profits generated in EU countries from tax. It claims doing so violates a 1972 free trade accord.
Switzerland has repeatedly refused to negotiate with the EU over the issue. The government says that corporate taxes are a cantonal issue and are not covered by the trade agreement."
It goes on to say in the same article...
"In a parallel development, Calmy-Rey announced that the EU and Switzerland would open negotiations next month on connecting their power grids to secure supplies and prevent a repeat of the outage that plunged Italy in darkness four years ago.
Both sides want to strike a deal on power transmission fees that would make it easier for electricity operators to channel surplus energy to customers in another country.
Switzerland is ringed by EU member nations such as France, Germany and Italy that have few links to each other.
They are also seeking to harmonise power safety standards and agree to recognise each other's certification system for green energy."
posted by Jill Nachtman at 1:32 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home