2 May 1992, and submitted an application for accession to the EU on 20 May 1992. However, after a Swiss referendum held on 6 December 1992 rejected EEA membership by 50.3% to 49.7%, the Swiss government decided to suspend negotiations for EU membership until further notice. These did not resume and in 2016, Switzerland formally withdrew its application for EU membership. In 1994, Switzerland and the EU started negotiations about a special relationship outside the EEA. Switzerland wanted to safeguard the economic integration with the EU that the EEA treaty would have permitted, while purging the relationship of the points of contention that had led to the people rejecting the referendum. Swiss politicians stressed the bilateral nature of these negotiations, where negotiations were conducted between two equal partners and not between 16, 26, 28 or 29, as is the case for EU treaty negotiations. These negotiations resulted in a total of ten treaties, negotiated in two phases, the sum of which makes a large share of EU law applicable to Switzerland. The treaties are: Bilateral I agreements (signed 1999, in effect 1 June 2002) Free movement of people Air traffic Road traffic Agricultural products Technical trade barriers Public procurement Science Bilateral II agreements (signed 2004, in effect gradually between 2005 and 2009) Security and asylum and Schengen membership Cooperation in fraud pursuits Final stipulations in open questions about agriculture, environment, media, education, care of the elderly, statistics and services. This strand established the Common Veterinary Area. The Bilateral I agreements are expressed to be mutually dependent. If any one of them is denounced or not renewed, they all cease to apply. According to the preamble of the EU decision ratifying the agreements: This is referred to as the "guillotine clause". While the bilateral approach theoretically safeguards the right to refuse the application of new EU rules to Switzerland, in practice the scope to do so is limited by the clause. The agreement on the European Economic Area contains a similar clause. Before 2014, the bilateral approach, as it is called in Switzerland, was consistently supported by the Swiss people in referendums. It allows the Swiss to keep a sense of sovereignty, due to arrangements when changes in EU law will only apply after the EU–Swiss Joint Committee' decides so in consensus. It also limits the EU influence to the ten areas, where the EEA includes more areas, with more exceptions