Reeling from a vote to cap European Union immigration, Switzerland's government and business community has moved to limit the damage to trade ties with the big European bloc.
Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter played down talk of a "Black Sunday" in ties with Brussels, after 50.3 percent of voters backed a referendum proposal to end a seven-year-old pact that gave equal footing to most EU citizens in the Swiss labour market.
"We need to avoid that kind of language," he told reporters.
"Switzerland is not going to rip up its deal with the EU on freedom of movement," he insisted.
Yet that assertion butted up against a so-called "guillotine" clause in a package of deals with EU that said that, if one deal is voided, the others collapse too.
The other deals have to do with issues such as trade between the EU members and non-member Switzerland.
Brussels says it will now scrutinise all EU-Swiss relations as a result of the vote.
While Switzerland has long had a sizeable foreign population, over recent years the proportion has climbed from one-fifth to roughly a quarter.
The voted-in measure requires authorities to revive rules that fixed quotas per business sector for work permits that can be issued to EU citizens.
It sets a three-year deadline to renegotiate the labour market deal with Brussels.
Burkhalter was set to launch a Europe-wide diplomatic drive to explain the vote and seek a solution.
Germany, his country's top commercial partner, was scheduled as his first stop.
But German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned that the result "is going to create plenty of problems for Switzerland in a host of areas".
In France, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said "we will review our relations with Switzerland".
