Seems Bundesrat have finally agreed to introduce this on 1st July 2010.

This means that if you have a product that is approved for sale in the EU then you can sell it here without any approval formalities. Of course, there is a long list of exceptions which list I have not yet found.

Nevertheless it is claimed that the overall saving for consumers will be around 2Bn CHF per year.

Must be good news?

Each?

(too short blah blah)

I hope so.....

food...beer...sounds about right

IMHO the biggest problem is not products that traders are not allowed to sell, but products that they can sell but won't because they don't believe there is a market for them. Many beer brands come to mind.

So what is needed is not a change in law but more entrepreunerial attitutudes among traders and importers.

Will this now allow parallel imports?

or grey ones...watch out pharms. DB, this should please you...

There were two things, importers very often found too complicated :
A) a lot of products had to be RE-licenced in Switzerland, as Switzerland did not accept the EU licencing
B) Imported products had to have all information in the three official national languages, now ONE language is sufficient.

good luck finding a pharmetuetical or consumer productthese days with only one language on...

> the pesky "medicines institute" in Bern still has some power, but now they have to define restrictions and get it passed, however no longer can licence or refuse to licence every single product
> if you import something from the U.K. or Spain you of course have to have it translated into either German, French or Italian but not into all three at the same time. AND, if you have the product in question sold all over Switzerland you can use the German l language labels for German speaking Switzerland (incl bilingual areas), the French l language labels for the Romandie (incl bilingual areas) and the Italian l language labels for Ticino, Mesolcina, Bregaglia and Poschiavo.

English, like Turkish or Arabic or Italian or Portuguese is just a "traffic language" here

That is all gone now . except for the exception list
On the positive side (not for me ) as an example I bought a new outboard motor for my boat about 2 years ago - if I could have bought a new motor in Germany (like I can now after 1 July) I could have saved 350 - 600 CHF

The key question is who is going to benefit from these reduced prices - the sellers or the consumers?

Let's wait and see if there is a massive price drop by 1st July.

Personally, I'm not holding my breath...

True
but you can now self-import EU things like my outboard motor example which formerly (before 1st July) would not pass an inspection because it did not have the Swiss tick in the box.

LOL, but I don't have much use for outboard motors

Seriously though, wouldn't it still have to go through various emissions and safety controls as it is an engine?

Otherwise the implication is that we can all go out an buy our cars in Germany/France/rest of EU, and I just can't see them allowing that without various controls (paid for, obviously, by the individual).

It's definitely a step in the right direction. A lot of unneeded bureaucracy is removed, imports made easier, and as Wolli mentioned, a lot of products are not available here because re-licensing it is quite expensive and time consuming.

Yes as I understand the situation it would have to go through various emissions and safety controls as it is an engine.
But formerly you could not even start this process because they would say "Sorry it is not on our list".

Signature collection going out for protection against the Cassis de Dijon Priciple ie more barriers sought as protection against foreign imports.

NZZ DE

Swissinfo DE / FR

I am sure they will get the signatures but I doubt most people will vote for it?
Anyway Cassis de Dijon Principle has not, in my view, caused any price reductions. For example last Saturday I was in OBI Schweiz & then in OBI De; the items I was looking at were more than double the price in OBI Schweiz.

Whatever the protection against foreign imports I will still buy many things over the border. Even if they completely take away the duty free allowance; 8% extra charge is nothing versus the half price saving .