Cheaper UK university fees for EU students to clinch Brexit reset deal

EU considers softening stance on fees and cap on ‘youth experience’ to get agreement over the line

The EU is pushing the UK to lower university tuition fees for Europeans under a new under-30s visa that is key to the Brexit reset but is discussing a compromise to help prop up university finances.

The i Paper understands that Brussels could compromise on its demand for “equal treatment”, which would mean European students stop having to pay international fees that can go up to £38,000 a year and instead pay domestic fees which are capped at £9,535 – the situation pre-Brexit.

The UK Government has been resisting EU demands to lower fees as cash-strapped universities become increasingly reliant on international fees to stay afloat.

New FeatureIn ShortQuick Stories. Same trusted journalism.

One compromise being discussed in the EU was a middle ground European-only fee set between domestic and international charges, that could for example be charged at the cost to the university of delivering a student place.

This would help encourage more EU students back to Britain by lowering what are seen as prohibitive costs while helping prop up higher education finances, which are once again under pressure after Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in the Budget this week that universities would have to pay a £925-per-student international student levy.

This could be coupled with concessions from the EU side on Britain’s demand for the overall number of visas issued under the mooted “youth experience” scheme to be capped.

UK trying to break deadlock over defence deal

It came as the UK was said to have made its own counter-proposal to try and break a deadlock in negotiations over Britain joining the EU’s 150bn euro (£130m) rearmament fund, ahead of Sunday’s deadline. They have stalled over Brussels’ demands for the UK to pay billions of pounds to “pay to play”.

The i Paper was told that Britain has submitted a counter offer that would instead mean that it pays-per-project funded under the scheme rather than the up front cost, which UK officials refused to deny.

The EU last week reportedly lowered its demands for the UK to pay up to 6.5bn euros in order to be able to bid for weapons contracts, to 2bn euros. The UK offered somewhere between 75m and 200m euros, and threatened to walk away from the talks.

But EU ambassadors were told on Wednesday that the two sides have yet to reach a deal.

The latest UK counter-proposal is to pay a proportion of the value of each weapons project funded under the EU scheme, rather than an up front cost, but there is scepticism that Brussels will agree to this.

The two sides are understood to be working on agreeing a  methodology to work out a fee, after UK sources complained that the EU appeared to have picked a figure out of thin air last week.

David Henig, UK director at the European Centre for International Political Economy, said it appeared Britain was “trying to find angles that are domestically reasonable and may find traction in Brussels”.

The former UK trade official also blamed splits in the EU on how important it is for the UK to join SAFE for the impasse in negotiations, saying “lack of agreement between EU member states is never a good basis for agreement”.

Talks set to ‘go down to the wire’

UK Cabinet sources continue to balk at the EU’s cash demands and questioned why Canada was being allowed to join for a much lower fee, thought to be hundreds of millions of euros, and insisted Britain’s defence industry would continue to thrive outside the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) fund.

But failure to reach agreement would be a major blow after British participation was sold as a major gain of Sir Keir Starme’rs Brexit “reset”, and European Commission Ursula von der Leyen in May suggested membership could be agreed in “weeks”.

Government sources believe talks will “go down to the wire” ahead of the Sunday deadline for participating countries to submit bids for loans for rearmament projects under SAFE, with a meeting between the Prime Minister and von der Leyen at the G20 summit last week regarded as positive as it led to negotiations continuing.

Some in the EU are also attempting to pressure the UK to agree to rejoining the Erasmus student exchange programme by Sunday if it wants British students to be able to participate from January 2027.

It is believed that if negotiations are successful, the UK joining the two EU schemes could be announced at the same time, with Erasmus viewed as the easier of the two negotiations.

Senior officials on both sides are next week expected to meet to take stock of negotiations so far, with the aim to resume in January, with talks also taking place on a food and drink deal, and energy and emissions trading agreements.