It didn’t go down well. Finally, weeks ahead of the big reset summit, Starmer has started to publicly relent: ditching a canned response that he had “no plans” for the scheme. EU officials, meanwhile, said that U.K. negotiators were starting to show openness to the idea.
But London has presented a compromise option: to keep immigration statistics down, the number of youngsters who can take part in the scheme will be capped, and their stays will be shortened to just one year to keep them from sticking around in the figures. British negotiators are also resisting EU pressure to restore European students’ access to lower home tuition fees at universities, a key ask of some capitals.
“It seems like there’s a bit of a deadlock, especially when it comes to tuition fees and quotas,” the EU official quoted above said, adding that “discussions with the U.K. are planned all of next week.”
At their check-in last week member country capitals urged the European Commission’s negotiators to stick to their guns. “Most of them really pushed on youth mobility,” the official said. Brussels has apparently attempted to compromise by dropping its earlier plans for four-year stays — it is now arguing for two years, or one initial year extendable to two. London is not yet buying it.
Go fish
Then there is the question of fishing. When Boris Johnson signed the maritime chapter of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement in 2021, EU fishers breathed a sigh of relief. In exchange for a Brexit trade agreement, the then-British prime minister had given away generous access to U.K. waters until June 2026.
With that access now due to expire and Britain back at the negotiating table, member countries like France want assurances it will continue for the foreseeable future. They’ve privately hinted they are prepared to send Starmer home empty-handed if they don’t get it.
