The conservative “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” presented the news on its front page and in an almost celebratory tone. “Switzerland moves closer to EU militarily”.

In her commentary on the inner pages she spoke of “a clear signal against isolation”.

The reason was the decision of the country’s government for Switzerland’s participation in two programs of PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation), a framework program to strengthen defense cooperation between EU member states that are able and willing to participate in it .

This is obviously an important development, which touches the core of Swiss neutrality, which for centuries has been an “identity” issue for the country. Supporters of this initiative speak of a revision of the “romantic” notion, that the country can feel safe under the umbrella of unconditional neutrality, in a world with new threats and in areas completely “unexplored” a few decades ago, such as cyber-crime. However, their arguments also concern the traditional form of defense, since in their opinion the decision to reduce the country’s military power after the end of the Cold War was wrong.

Nationalists react

On the other hand, there is criticism from the Eurosceptic and extremely conservative, nationalist Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which has traditionally opposed any form of cooperation with the European Union, but also with NATO. The far-right party does not deny the need to strengthen the country’s military power, but believes that this should happen within the framework of its autonomy. He criticizes the government and asks for such a far-reaching decision on the future of the country to be immediately debated and approved by the parliament. The current president, Viola Amherd, has been particularly targeted, who is characterized as the main person responsible for this “political scandal”.

Of course, this is a first and cautious step, even if the dissenters compare it with the country’s entry into the EU. PESCO includes a total of 68 areas of cooperation, and Switzerland intends at this stage to participate in two of them . In its decision, it has obviously been influenced by the choice of other countries, such as Finland and Sweden, who felt that they should abandon their neutrality and join NATO.

In the “Schengen of armies”

The first program concerns the mobility of military forces (Military Mobility) and is called in the slang of experts as “Schengen of armies”, since it aims to facilitate and speed up the movement of military forces between countries, overcoming time-consuming and bureaucratic procedures that exist until today. This can happen during multinational military exercises, as part of peacekeeping missions, or in extraordinary circumstances, such as responding to major natural disasters.

The second program promotes the cooperation of the Swiss military with similar services of EU countries to deal with cyber attacks. In the first phase, it will involve simulations of attacks, dealing with various situations and threats together. At this point, Ukraine’s interest in more active participation in the specific program is of particular importance.

Cyber ​​defense with NATO

However, Switzerland has already cooperated in some exercises with the NATO Cyber ​​Defense Center, which has been installed in Estonia. In one of them there was also Ukrainian participation. Opponents of joining PESCO alongside Ukraine fear that this could be interpreted as an indirect involvement in the war conflict. An important role for this step was the assessment that there are some gaps in the level of cyber security and the “opening” to foreign sister services could lead to their filling.

In any case, the related decisions have caused intense political confrontations and have opened a debate, which a few years ago would have been unthinkable. Of course no one openly and completely rejects neutrality. Some simply ask for a rather more flexible interpretation of it, “adjusted to the new data”. If there is certainly such a response, many believe that other steps will follow, which may ultimately touch its very essence. The recent cautious approach is rather a first step, which is in a sense tentative in nature.