The youth mobility issue has been a major sticking point for UK/EU relations since the general election. The EU wants its students to pay domestic level tuition costs, and no cap on how many students can do this. This is a very hard sell to the UK since the domestic fees aren’t enough to sustain universities, which are already cash strapped.
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The EU is demanding that there should be no limit on the number of people who can use a youth mobility scheme with the UK in a move that sets up a fresh confrontation between London and Brussels.
A draft EU text of a proposed agreement seen by the Financial Times states that both sides “shall not impose quota” when implementing the agreement, known as the Youth Experience Scheme (YES), despite UK ministers repeatedly promising that such a scheme would be capped.
The EU is also continuing to demand that students from the bloc who attend UK universities pay the same lower level of tuition fees as Britons.
The draft text makes it clear that stark differences remain between the two sides despite hopes that significant gaps had been smoothed over at a summit in Windsor in May.
It comes just a week after talks for the UK to join a €140bn EU defence fund broke down following London’s refusal to pay billions of euros in fees.
Brussels and London are also in negotiations over separate deals to remove border checks on food and plant products, and to re-link the two sides’ carbon-pricing schemes.
Sir Keir Starmer, UK prime minister, this week called for a “grown-up” debate in Britain about developing a closer relationship with the EU, but warned: “We have to accept that this will require trade-offs.”
But the demands from Brussels on the new youth scheme confirm that some of those trade-offs — such as looser migration rules and preferential EU access to cash-strapped British universities — are potentially politically painful.
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The youth mobility issue has been a major sticking point for UK/EU relations since the general election. The EU wants its students to pay domestic level tuition costs, and no cap on how many students can do this. This is a very hard sell to the UK since the domestic fees aren’t enough to sustain universities, which are already cash strapped.
The EU is demanding that there should be no limit on the number of people who can use a youth mobility scheme with the UK in a move that sets up a fresh confrontation between London and Brussels.
A draft EU text of a proposed agreement seen by the Financial Times states that both sides “shall not impose quota” when implementing the agreement, known as the Youth Experience Scheme (YES), despite UK ministers repeatedly promising that such a scheme would be capped.
The EU is also continuing to demand that students from the bloc who attend UK universities pay the same lower level of tuition fees as Britons.
The draft text makes it clear that stark differences remain between the two sides despite hopes that significant gaps had been smoothed over at a summit in Windsor in May.
It comes just a week after talks for the UK to join a €140bn EU defence fund broke down following London’s refusal to pay billions of euros in fees.
Brussels and London are also in negotiations over separate deals to remove border checks on food and plant products, and to re-link the two sides’ carbon-pricing schemes.
Sir Keir Starmer, UK prime minister, this week called for a “grown-up” debate in Britain about developing a closer relationship with the EU, but warned: “We have to accept that this will require trade-offs.”
But the demands from Brussels on the new youth scheme confirm that some of those trade-offs — such as looser migration rules and preferential EU access to cash-strapped British universities — are potentially politically painful.