The Federal Council confirmed on 25 February that President Guy Parmelin will travel to Brussels on 2 March to sign the long-awaited “Bilaterals III” package with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The omnibus deal – negotiated since 2024 and initialled in May 2025 – bundles six sectoral accords (including electricity, food safety, public procurement and research participation) together with an updated free-movement agreement, an institutional dispute-settlement mechanism and a new contribution to EU cohesion funds.
For globally mobile companies the most important element is legal certainty around the Free Movement of Persons (FMP). After three years of limbo, the signing will freeze existing rights for EU/EFTA citizens working in Switzerland, reinstate automatic dynamic alignment of future EU rules on residence rights, and create a joint arbitration panel to settle disputes more quickly. Payroll providers and mobility managers expect the change to cut processing times for B and L permits by 20-30 percent once cantonal IT systems are updated.
For employers that prefer to outsource the paperwork entirely, VisaHQ can act as a one-stop shop: its Swiss portal (https://www.visahq.com/switzerland/) tracks the latest federal and cantonal rules and files applications electronically, helping HR teams secure work permits, entry visas and apostilled documents quickly and compliantly.
![Swiss-EU ‘Bilaterals III’ ready for signature on 2 March, paving way for a new era of market access and free-movement certainty]()
A second headline item is mutual recognition of professional qualifications in new occupations such as cyber-security and advanced nursing. Firms complain that today it can take six months to recognise an EU diploma; the new annex should reduce that to eight weeks – critical for Swiss life-science and med-tech clusters that recruit heavily from neighbouring countries.
The package also unlocks Switzerland’s full association to Horizon Europe and Erasmus+. Universities will again be able to recruit doctoral candidates on EU stipends and corporations regaining access to collaborative R&D projects may resume secondments that have been on hold since 2021. Swiss Finance Institute calculations suggest lost research funding cost the country up to CHF 600 million a year; mobility-related grants (Marie Skłodowska-Curie, ERC) accounted for a quarter of that sum.
What happens next? The accords still require ratification by the Swiss Parliament and the European Parliament. Assuming no referendum is called, provisional application could start on 1 January 2027. Mobility teams should therefore map transitional arrangements now: quotas for UK nationals, for example, remain unchanged until the new FMP chapter takes effect; posted-worker notification rules will also stay in force until Brussels and Bern agree on enforcement details.
For globally mobile companies the most important element is legal certainty around the Free Movement of Persons (FMP). After three years of limbo, the signing will freeze existing rights for EU/EFTA citizens working in Switzerland, reinstate automatic dynamic alignment of future EU rules on residence rights, and create a joint arbitration panel to settle disputes more quickly. Payroll providers and mobility managers expect the change to cut processing times for B and L permits by 20-30 percent once cantonal IT systems are updated.
For employers that prefer to outsource the paperwork entirely, VisaHQ can act as a one-stop shop: its Swiss portal (https://www.visahq.com/switzerland/) tracks the latest federal and cantonal rules and files applications electronically, helping HR teams secure work permits, entry visas and apostilled documents quickly and compliantly.
A second headline item is mutual recognition of professional qualifications in new occupations such as cyber-security and advanced nursing. Firms complain that today it can take six months to recognise an EU diploma; the new annex should reduce that to eight weeks – critical for Swiss life-science and med-tech clusters that recruit heavily from neighbouring countries.
The package also unlocks Switzerland’s full association to Horizon Europe and Erasmus+. Universities will again be able to recruit doctoral candidates on EU stipends and corporations regaining access to collaborative R&D projects may resume secondments that have been on hold since 2021. Swiss Finance Institute calculations suggest lost research funding cost the country up to CHF 600 million a year; mobility-related grants (Marie Skłodowska-Curie, ERC) accounted for a quarter of that sum.
What happens next? The accords still require ratification by the Swiss Parliament and the European Parliament. Assuming no referendum is called, provisional application could start on 1 January 2027. Mobility teams should therefore map transitional arrangements now: quotas for UK nationals, for example, remain unchanged until the new FMP chapter takes effect; posted-worker notification rules will also stay in force until Brussels and Bern agree on enforcement details.
