The Swiss Virus: Europe Gripped by Immigration Worries

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/right-wing-populists-stand-to-benefit-from-eu-immigration-concerns-a-953897.html



The Swiss aren't the only ones in Europe deeply concerned about immigration. Many across the Continent would also like to see limits placed on newcomers from elsewhere in the EU. Europe must remain firm, but right-wing populists stand to benefit.

The Swiss Virus: Europe Gripped by Immigration Worries
By SPIEGEL Staff
February 17, 2014 – 05:15 PM

The man who sent all of Europe into a flurry of agitation is battling a persistent cough. But Christoph Blocher is in the best of moods nonetheless. He is enjoying his victory in the five-star Hotel Ermitage near Gstaad at an altitude of 1,231 meters (4,038 feet) with the snow-covered Alpine peaks of the Berner Oberland as a backdrop.

Blocher is wearing brown pants and a plaid shirt stretched over his ample belly. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the receptionists are wearing traditional folk costumes and paintings of happy-looking cows decorate the walls. It is how he likes his country of Switzerland.

Blocher is recovering here from his strenuous campaign against "mass immigration," which he led together with his Swiss People's Party. Without Blocher, the referendum never would have come to pass -- and it certainly would not have achieved its unexpected success, which saw a razor-thin majority of 50.3 percent of voters approving quotas for immigration from European Union countries. It is a result that strikes at the core of united Europe. And once again, Blocher showed them all, particularly the Swiss government in Bern and EU headquarters in Brussels.

It is his most significant triumph since 1992, when he also used a referendum to prevent Switzerland from joining the European Economic Area, a result which put a stop to the country's courtship with EU membership.