The Swiss upper house passed the decision to approve the sale of 25 Leopard 2A4's to Rheinmetall with the condition that they are not transferred to Ukraine by 25 votes to 15 with 3 abstentions, earlier the lower house already approved decommission. Now Federal Council approval is needed, which is believed to be a formality.
Not exactly simple... but yes in general. Exactly all Leopard-2A6 and A7 in the German army started their life as an old A4. So they can theoretically indeed use them as a base for new A7s while freeing up A6s that would be upgraded (that's an ongoing process since 2019... by 2026 every single A6 should be upgraded to A7V). But this is of course not something done in weeks or so. There are no Leopard-2A4s anymore in Germany, so they cannot not replace anything in their current state.
A maybe easier but faster idea would be exports to other countries to free up industry ressources. For example the industry is still working on A4 tanks for countries that get them as a replacements for stuff they send to Ukraine. Some of them might be willing to accept ones that can't be send to Ukraine (after all they don't plan to send those anyway, but want to start training with them and later upgrade them as their new standard tank) when it comes with a faster delivery (depending on their condition of course).
Or you find someone else still operating A4s and willing to trade.
So no, it's not a simple trade. For now it's just another set of older tanks available (and compared to some of them in Europe probably in a proper condition not requiring massive refurbishment).
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