what the Swiss are trying to do here is very uncommon, in fact it's so uncommon literally nobody has ever done it before. No country in history has imposed a numerical population cap on its population, and in addition, freedom of movement isn't a detail. It's the very core of the Treaty of Rome and the Schengen agreement that Switzerland is part of. That Europeans can now move freely between countries is the bedrock achievement of virtually all its labored for.

And the EU is not going to do braconian measures, the EU does not bully its smaller neighbors. Britain wasn't intimated, threatened and nobody tried to interfere with it when they wanted to leave. THey decided to do so and did. Swizterland can cap its population and deny freedom of movement, nobody's going to bully them, but they're obviously not going to have the relationship they had with the EU.

To even rhetorically compare the EU to the US (which has threatened to annex an ally's territory) or China (which throws minorities into camps and threatens a democracy with force) is pretty damn absurd. Ask Taiwan if they want to trade places with Switzerland on the world map if they could.

> the Swiss are to be the recipient of some draconian action "we'll show them"

It's quite clear that the EU-Swiss agreements were negotiated as a whole and one side just can't suddenly pick parts of it that it will reject.

It has treaties, but not membership. That doesn't make it "leaving" if they annul the treaties.