A deadline for a youth mobility scheme between the EU and the UK could be deferred by six months in a bid to ensure Andy Burnham has a successful “reset” summit on 20 November, diplomats have said.
EU ambassadors in Brussels on Wednesday heard that the UK was still insisting on international tuition fees, quotas and an NHS surcharge for EU students. This has fuelled fears the summit could fail, just as the prime minister is promising to unveil a new vision for Britain’s long-term relationship with the EU.
Sources say the UK also continues to push for a cap of about 50,000 a year on the numbers of EU citizens allowed in the country for work, travel or study under the mooted youth experience scheme (YES) visas. Some EU member states want the cap much higher, at between 100,000 and 500,000. Others want no cap at all.
The UK is also insisting that any YES visa holders pay the £1,035 NHS surcharge to cover potential doctor or hospital visits, although it is understood that a 25% discount has been suggested.
Negotiations on two other issues – a food and drink trade deal and the emissions trading system – are almost complete but views on the youth mobility scheme remain divided.
Sources say there is near-agreement on demands from the National Farmers’ Union that crops grown using fungicides yet to be approved in the EU could be sold in the bloc under a transition arrangement in the sanitary and phyto-sanitary agreement.
“A lot of member states were in favour of keeping the trio of issues together and not breaking the agenda up, but there are others that think it is acceptable to decouple them and there is no agreement yet on which approach to take,” said one diplomat.
But the reciprocal youth experience scheme designed to allow under-30s from both sides to work, travel or study in each other’s countries remains deadlocked.
Talks on a fourth issue, in relation to the reintegration of the UK into the EU’s energy market, will also, as expected, continue after 20 November. More time is needed to resolve significant barriers that have emerged, such as state aid and oversight frameworks, including a role for the European court of justice.
Tuition fees remains the thorniest problem, with UK universities putting pressure on the Labour government to maintain full international student fees for EU citizens – which can run to £69,190 a year at Oxford.
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One diplomat said there was an “emerging consensus” at the meeting in Brussels around a European Commission proposal to take tuition fees out of the package altogether, with wording in a joint statement on 20 November committing both sides to negotiating a solution by May 2027.
It was thought that the landing zone was somewhere between home fees of £9,790 and the average international fees, but universities outside the elite 24-strong Russell Group have told the UK government they cannot afford to drop fees for EU citizens.
According to several diplomats, the bloc is still divided on whether to remove tuition fees from the table. There are also divisions over how a cap on numbers would work amid fears in the UK that voters – particularly in “red wall” constituencies – would see it as opening the gates to workers coming from economically less wealthy countries such as Bulgaria.
A proposal to cap the figures per country has been suggested, although how that would work in practice has not been detailed.
Some countries such as France are still arguing for an “all or nothing” approach, with all three topics on the table, arguing if the UK cannot agree tuition fees now, 17 months since the last EU-UK summit, “why would they do so in six months?”.
Others say with pressure to move on from three “significant but modest” issues to the bigger issues of deeper economic, security and defence ties, they cannot risk a failure on 20 November.
“YES is politically, emotionally and diplomatically very important. But if we can get an agreement at the summit by removing one element from the agenda it is a price worth paying,” said one diplomat.
