EU Ambassador to Britain – Pedro Serrano (Image: PA Wire)
A deal on a youth mobility scheme between the EU and UK might be within reach. That is according to government sources. As reported by the Times, a gap year style scheme for EU citizens is expected to be approved and presented to the UK imminently. The policy could in fact even allow for movement of four years at a time.
EU Ambassador to Britain – Pedro Serrano – told Times Radio, “if we have a mechanism that allows young British citizens to go for a gap year, for example, to any of 27 states within the – to do a bit of learning and get pay … while they’re there, why not?”.
A UK government source later told the Times ministers believe there is a “landing zone” for an agreement for Britain to join.
For many Brexiteers this may feel like a betrayal given how high a priority capping immigration was for Leave voters, especially from the EU. Yet, in the aftermath of , EU migration gave way to record-breaking non-EU migration, something which ironically saw a deluge of support for and Reform UK in the July election.
For Labour, approval of a scheme for the EU would achieve two objectives. First, it would be a quick and easy way of beginning to re-ingratiate the UK with the bloc without much fanfare. Second, it could be used to accommodate the needs of the economy while responding to popular concerns about non-European mass migration.
After all, the UK already has youth mobility schemes for 18-to-35-year-olds with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Korea, and for 18-to-30-year-olds with Andorra, Hong Kong, Iceland, Japan, Monaco, San Marino, Taiwan, and Uruguay.
The idea being that these countries are all developed and unlikely to become major source countries of mass immigration since they offer comparable living standards to Britain.
In the case of Australia, Canada and New Zealand, all three are Commonwealth Realms, sharing a head of state, language, customs and culture with the UK.
Although some areas of the EU – the type of Central and Eastern EU states from which most EU migration came in recent years – could again become major source countries for migration, not only are these countries rapidly catching up to Western European living standards, but presumably any youth scheme would control for long-term settlement.
Although Labour has so far indicated it prefers country-by-country deals, would Sir really block such a move?
Of course, there are problems with the EU proposal. Four year stays may be deemed too long, meanwhile any desire to allow EU students to pay UK-level higher education fees is likely to be heavily resisted by many poverty-pleading universities.
But it seems unlikely that a workaround cannot be found, especially if this gets the UK back into bed with Brussels – clearly a goal of the Starmer government, and a condition for such a move would likely be getting this youth scheme over the line – while using said scheme as a means to bring down mass immigration from outside the EU.
Like it or not, the Brexiteers are no longer in charge, if ever they were, having surrendered to a Tory government which botched , and by and large supported Leave in name only. With the ball now firmly in Labour’s court, it would be foolish to bet against the UK signing up to an EU-wide youth mobility scheme, and with it, the start of a reset in EU-UK relations.