Snejdarek
Member
Hope you don't mind me putting in some information on what's happening in Switzerland.
Some context for our American mates:
- Switzerland is not in the EU, but they have over 200 bilateral treaties with EU in a number of fields that allow them near-same access to the EU single market
- One of those treaties is also Schengen treaty, which forms an area without formal internal border control in Europe. Non-EU countries can join Schengen treaty but by doing so they must agree to adopt EU law in a number of fields. In this case also the EU Gun Ban which was formally adopted as a Single Market Measure (i.e. a law to allow easier crossborder purchases of firearms) as there were doubts whether EU can legislate it as a safety measure (safety is generally considered as national power, not EU).
- Swiss government was invited to the process of preparation of the EU Gun Ban. In the preparatory phase, Swiss government was actually supporting the EU Gun Ban, which left the participating Czech government representatives quite puzzled.
- Swiss government asked for some special Swiss exemption with the reasoning that they need to show something at home to avoid being defeated in referendum.
- The Swiss exemption is total BS. It basically says that militia is exempted... if they fulfill all the egregious requirements for sport shooters.
- To make it even worse for the Swiss government, the Czech suit for annulment of the EU Gun Ban targets the Swiss exemption (among 4 other things). The exemption may be used only in countries with over 50 years of militia system, so it is clearly discriminatory towards countries that were under communist dictatorship until 1990. This part of the suit actually has high chances of success.
- Swiss referendum is expected to take place in May 2019, which is right about time that we expect decision of the EU court regardig the Czech suit. I guess now we can rest knowing that they will not decide before the Swiss to avoid feeding the Swiss pro-referendum folk.
In the Czech debate, we sometimes use Swiss as example that there are more countries opposing the EU Gun Ban, it is not just that we are outliers - in order to gather support of wider non-gun public. As far as I can tell Swiss are avoiding mentioning of the resistance in the Czech Republic. I even offered them cooperation on information exchange but never heard back.