France Switzerland

Introduction

The Franco-Swiss border is not a homogeneous territory, as its territorial development is organized around three main areas: the Basel urban area, integrated into the Upper Rhine Euroregion, ‘Greater Geneva,’ and the trans-Jura region. The rural and mountainous areas constitute autonomous and distinct spaces, notably represented within the Jura Arc and the Mont Blanc area. In contrast, the urban areas, organized around Greater Geneva and the trinational Eurodistrict of Basel, form highly integrated cooperation spaces. Greater Geneva, encompassing the French departments of Ain and Haute-Savoie and the Swiss cantons of Geneva and Vaud, has made cross-border cooperation a strategic priority with the establishment in 2013 of a Local Cross-Border Cooperation Group (GLCT) to manage cross-border governance of the urban area. As for the Basel metropolitan area, it took the form of a trinational Eurodistrict in 2007.

These urban areas serve as crossing points for many cross-border commuters heading to Switzerland. The flow of cross-border workers (from France to Switzerland) is the highest of all French borders: in 2024, out of 403,000 people who crossed the border into Switzerland, 231,322 were French workers, representing an increase of 2.8% since 2019. This number is steadily increasing, mainly due to the attractiveness of the job market. As an illustration, INSEE notes in its November 2024 report  an increase of nearly 89% in these flows since 2010. In the fourth quarter of 2023, Switzerland was home to 130,660 cross-border workers living in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, including 101,413 in the canton of Geneva alone. They mainly came from Haute-Savoie (96,167 to Switzerland), Ain (30,158), and, to a lesser extent, Savoie (1,526), even though these flows are increasing.

This growth in the number of French cross-border workers is mainly explained by the attractiveness of Swiss salaries as well as the dynamism of the labor market. In the opposite direction, only about a hundred people travel from Switzerland to France for work. The implications of this disparity, in terms of transport, urbanization, housing, employment, health, planning, and economic development, among others, are at the heart of the cross-border issues in the region. The increase in commuting time for cross-border workers raises public health and environmental concerns. According to the INSEE report, cross-border workers in this region travel 43 km to get to their workplace. Another consequence of these flows, also to address the resulting imbalances, is that financial compensation systems have been implemented in various cantons and border territories.

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