Switzerland: 8% unemployment set as the threshold for ‘indigenous’ recruitment priority

On 08 December, Switzerland’s Federal Parliament set as 8% the unemployment threshold rate above which Swiss employers will have to advertise vacant positions without any nationality partisanship. The rate will be taken into account per business sector. This rate has been temporarily set until 2020 when it then falls to 5%. These ‘loose’ provisions are part of the application law from the 2014 immigration referendum (c.f. article No. 8162), which had called for a migrant quota system and which runs counter to the Swiss-EU bilateral agreement on free movement of persons. The law comes into force on 01 July 2018.
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Swiss native preference. On 09 February 2014, the Swiss voted to limit immigration flows and it set foreign worker quotas. The government and parliaments then had three years within which to apply the referendum’s provisions. The whole event has been a troublesome affair because of a bi-lateral agreement between Switzerland and the EU that rejects any and all forms of quota. On 16 December 2016 Switzerland’s Federal Assembly finally approved a ‘looser’ form of application legislation and this h

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