Britain can benefit from an exchange of young talent
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“Experience” has replaced “mobility” in talks between the UK and the EU over a scheme that would let young people move between the two to live and work. Such is the sensitivity about any perceived return to freedom of movement. But the issue is being discussed seriously before a summit in London next month, and that is to be welcomed. Allowing an exchange of young talent would bring obvious economic and social benefits. It would also be positive in diplomatic terms.
The May 19 meeting will be the beginning of a prolonged renegotiation of the UK’s relationship with Europe, the first since Boris Johnson’s Christmas Eve Brexit deal of 2020. Weak growth, President Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and President Trump’s second coming make sensible co-operation essential. Sir Keir Starmer and Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, have said the two sides could agree a security and defence pact, securing access for British companies such as BAE Systems to a new €150 billion weapons fund.
However, bosses should not hold out hope for a far easier flow of trade. Brussels is said to have rejected a mutual recognition agreement that would have reduced checks on products entering the bloc’s single market from the UK. It took almost a decade and significant concessions for Switzerland to strike a similar deal.
A youth mobility — or experience — scheme would be a good start. Many will remember 1992 and the sense of opportunity felt by the young both here and abroad after the liberalisation of EU labour laws, opening up Britain and the continent to students on exchange programmes and younger workers. The Home Office is understandably concerned about the impact on immigration. Something of the ilk being reported — a one-year visa that could be rolled over, with quotas on numbers and restrictions on the sectors EU and UK citizens could work in — would not have a big effect on overall numbers. The UK already allows people from 12 non-EU nations to visit for a two-year or three-year period. About 23,000 young people from countries such as Australia came under the scheme in 2023.
Clearly the challenge will be monitoring compliance and making sure EU visitors do not overstay. That is where a digital identity card programme of the kind operated in Singapore — and loudly endorsed by Sir Tony Blair — might now be useful. The UK needs to fight illegal migration and control legal migration, but it also needs to be smarter about the way it approaches both.