Domestic Contestation of Free Movement: Brexit, Schwexit and Beyond

The free movement of persons and workers has been facing mounting domestic contestation over the last few years, especially in the context of referenda. This poses a challenge to mobility rights, which are at the core of EU citizenship. In essence, attempts to reclaim the national boundaries of citizenship relate to both its territorial and social dimension. The Brexiteers’ slogan “taking back control” is about re-empowering the national parliament as the voice of its territorially bound electorate exercising their political rights as national citizens. Attacks on transnational citizenship are furthermore motivated by the idea of redrawing the national boundaries of social rights, restricting access to welfare benefits to national citizens. The paper discusses this double challenge to EU citizenship based on a comparative analysis of the Brexit and Schwexit debates. In both cases high profile domestic politicisation have led to referenda and re-negotiations of the relations with the EU. A public vote held in Switzerland in February 2014 mandated policy-makers with the task to curtail the EU-imposed principle of free movement in order to secure compliance with newly introduced constitutional provisions. In the run up to its Brexit vote the UK achieved a new settlement with the EU, the most controversial items of which related to access to national welfare for EU migrants. And the Brexit vote of June 2016 triggered the launch of negotiations to exit the EU with a rather explicit mandate to end free movement. The paper puts into perspective the consequences of such politicisation for the viability and legitimacy of EU transnational citizenship.