The Chiasso-Stabio-Mendrisio logistics belt and the Gotthard corridor

Chiasso: a border town made by the railway

The logistics belt of the Mendrisiotto owes its existence to the Gotthard railway, whose history Chapter C.III describes. The convention between Switzerland and Italy signed in Bern on 23 December 1873 and approved by the Federal Assembly on 27 January 1874 fixed the connection of the Swiss and Italian networks at Chiasso and Pino. It gave Chiasso the status of an international border station.¹ The line from Chiasso to Lugano opened in 1874 and the line to Como in 1876. According to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, the railway and the international station brought forwarding houses (case di spedizione) to the town, together with a free zone (punto franco) that operated from 1925.² Chiasso's population rose from about 3,700 in 1900 to 8,868 in 1970, when the town had become a financial centre of its own and the economic centre of the district. It declined to 7,720 in 2000 in the course of the decentralization of the 1980s and 1990s.³ The banking side of this history, including the Chiasso scandal of 1977, is treated in Chapter D.III.

The forwarding houses of Chiasso performed functions that the modern logistics industry still performs. They organized the transfer of goods between the Swiss and Italian railways, prepared customs declarations, advanced duties and freight charges, insured consignments and stored goods awaiting onward transport. In an age of currency controls and import quotas they were also intermediaries of the grey economy of the border. The line between legitimate forwarding and smuggling was not always clear, as Chapter A.IV shows for earlier centuries. The family firms that grew from this trade formed the nucleus of the customs brokerage and logistics sector on which the fashion groups later relied.⁴

The road border at Brogeda

Since the opening of the A2 motorway and of the Italian A9 from Milan to Como, most goods cross the border by road at Chiasso-Brogeda, one of the busiest heavy goods crossings between Switzerland and Italy. About 500,000 trucks pass through this customs office every year in both directions.⁵ Queues on the motorway between Mendrisio and Chiasso, especially on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, are a recurrent subject of cantonal politics. The Federal Roads Office and the cantonal police have introduced metering lanes and speed controls to manage them.⁶ Since October 2022 the southern customs office at Brogeda has served as a pilot site for the digitalization programme of the Federal Office for Customs and Border Security (FOCBS), called DaziT, launched in 2018. Drivers can complete payments and transit documents online and pass the border without stopping at the counter, which saves fifteen to thirty minutes per crossing.⁷

The digitalization of customs and the liberalization of tariffs have changed the economics of the border trade. On 1 January 2024 Switzerland abolished its import duties on all industrial products, that is, the goods in chapters 25 to 97 of the customs tariff with the exception of certain agricultural products. Parliament had adopted the reform on 1 October 2021, and the Federal Council estimated its welfare gain at about CHF 860 million a year. The obligation to file an import declaration with the correct tariff number and weight remains, and preferential origin evidence remains necessary for goods re-exported to the European Union under the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean rules of origin.⁸ The total revision of customs law, which splits the Customs Act into a Customs Duties Act and a Federal Act on the Enforcement Tasks of the FOCBS, has been debated in Parliament since the Federal Council's message of August 2022. The Council of States approved it unanimously in the winter session of 2024 and returned the remaining differences to the National Council. During the debate the National Council decided in March 2024 to relieve certain duty-free goods from the declaration obligation, which prompted a question in the municipal council of Chiasso about the consequences for forwarding agents and their employees.⁹

Notes

1. laRegione, report on the 150th anniversary of Chiasso international station (2024), https://www.laregione.ch/cantone/mendrisiotto/1733861/servizi. ↩
2. Stefania Bianchi, "Chiasso", Dizionario storico della Svizzera (version of 30 June 2022), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/002230/. ↩
3. Bianchi, "Chiasso" (above). ↩
4. The characterization of the forwarding houses' functions draws on Bianchi, "Chiasso" (above), and on the general history in Chapters A.IV and D.II. ↩
5. RSI, "La dogana del futuro prende forma a Chiasso" (21 October 2022, updated 20 November 2024), https://www.rsi.ch/info/ticino-grigioni-e-insubria/La-dogana-del-futuro-prende-forma-a-Chiasso--1802459.html. ↩
6. laRegione, report on truck traffic at Chiasso-Brogeda (29 October 2020), https://www.laregione.ch/cantone/mendrisiotto/1471090/servizi. ↩
7. RSI (21 October 2022, above). ↩
8. State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), "Aufhebung der Industriezölle", https://www.seco.admin.ch/de/aufhebung-industriezoelle. ↩
9. Année politique suisse, dossier "Révision totale de la loi sur les douanes (MCF 22.058)", https://anneepolitique.swiss/dossiers/1384-dossier-revision-totale-de-la-loi-sur-les-douanes-mcf-22-058-mise-en-oeuvre-de-diverses-motions.pdf (Federal Council message of August 2022; National Council 120 to 62 in March 2024; Council of States 41 to 0 in the winter session 2024, with differences returned to the National Council); laRegione, report on the question in the Chiasso municipal council (13 March 2024), https://laregione.ch/1740530. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.