It may impact Swiss nationals in other countries as well. One of my Swiss colleagues is pretty worried about what this means for his Danish job. My understanding is that it's possible he could be deported, though that probably won't happen. The freedom-to-reside treaty is reciprocal: Danish nationals can work and live in Switzerland under equal conditions that Swiss nationals can work and live in Denmark. Now it appears that Switzerland has abrogated parts of its treaty obligations, and is imposing new restrictions on Danish nationals living in Switzerland. It's not clear what this means for the treaty rights of Swiss nationals living in Denmark. They may no longer have any treaty rights if Switzerland is deemed to have withdrawn from the treaty. Though Denmark might voluntarily choose to grandfather in existing residents, or give them an easy path to apply for a new visa (probably the business community will strongly push for this).

If the Danish wanted to give Switzerland the finger they could just offer all Swiss there a deal: Become a Danish citizen if you renounce your Swiss citizenship.

Though I expect a reaction that is both more level-headed and apathetic, especially from the Danish, since they have lately also been keen on the xenophobia front (re-instated border controls a few years back).

The dependency goes two ways. For example, there is no German car without parts coming from Switzerland. I hope that Brussels does not act offended and stays reasonable. Any action that hurts both parties would just be childish. However, they Swiss already struggled in the past to explain their democracy to the EU bureaucrats. Being used to decide for themselves, European politicians often fail to fully comprehend a system in which the people have the last word.

I suppose you consider not upholding one side of the treaty when the other side has been dropped "childish"?

The Swiss do not want to drop the treaty - which is about much more than just immigration. They only want to keep immigration limited - as it was already the case until 2010. Going back to that level would be the simplest and most pragmatic solution.

The problem with this is that the Eurocrats see Europe's political integration as a one-way street: once you are in, there is no way back. They hate and threaten anyone who wants to go a step back - even if it is just a small one. The root cause is their fear of others imitating the Swiss and Brussels losing power. This has become very apparent during the euro crisis: while there are lots of rules for joining the euro-zone, none of the treaties ever even mentioned how one could leave it again. Leaving is just not an option in the minds of European politicians. This leaves no room for experiments and makes the EU very inflexible.

Well but... we all know that. With that I mean that we know what EU treat are before we sign it. Once signed, obviously, we must not trash it expecting that nothing will happen.

And, in this specific case, we can not trash a part of a treat hoping the rest will be still accepted without problems, that is not the way contracts work.

Yes, that's the right spirit. You make a deal, then you don't keep up your part of the deal, and then if the other part reacts they are "childish".

Democracy means that the Swiss are free to make their choices, and bear the consequences, like every other democracy.

Well, would you say that choice is more important than freedom of religion? The Swiss seem to think so.

In reality, you always have to make compromises. Pure democracy, in which the vox populi is total imperative must lead to isolationism in todays multi-faceted, complicated world. The best IMO best way to deal with todays world is the parlamentary democracy, where the citizens decide on the big questions and choices of direction while the technocrats try to work things out as close as possible to the stated choice of the electorate.

Picking out a tiny fragment of a big international treaty with many interested parties and rejecting that after the fact is childish.