{"id":106492,"date":"2025-05-16T14:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T14:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/106492\/"},"modified":"2025-05-16T14:31:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T14:31:07","slug":"softer-brexit-hinges-on-3500-visa-fee-for-under-30s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/106492\/","title":{"rendered":"Softer Brexit hinges on \u00a33,500 visa fee for under-30s\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\t\t\t\tSofter-Brexit talks are on ‘razor’s edge’ as EU grows frustrated with UK’s ‘unattractive’ demands\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

The EU wants the UK to lower demands to charge thousands of pounds in visa fees for under-30s in return for help tackling the Channel crisis, The i Paper has learnt.<\/p>\n

As negotiations on Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s Brexit reset<\/a> go to the \u201crazor\u2019s edge\u201d ahead of Monday\u2019s UK-EU summit, Brussels is pushing for fresh concessions from London on its key demand for a youth mobility scheme<\/a> to allow under-30s to move, work and study between Britain and Europe.<\/p>\n

The EU has accepted UK demands for youth mobility to be time-limited and capped, but sources said the British offer was still \u201cunattractive\u201d and \u201cstringent\u201d and wants London to reduce expected demands for more than \u00a31,000 of fees and requirement for \u00a32,500 of savings to access the scheme.<\/p>\n

If the UK makes concessions, an EU source suggested Brussels could give way on Home Secretary Yvette Cooper\u2019s demand for more migrant and criminal data-sharing, which the Home Office believes is key to tackling the Channel crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The EU source said: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if on migration data-sharing we can see progress \u2013 but it has to be exchanged for something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brussels has also floated a new proposal for any youth mobility scheme to be subject to a review mechanism in a few years time, to see if it could be expanded.<\/p>\n

A Whitehall source suggested the UK could agree to this second demand and it could provide a \u201clanding\u201d zone for talks on youth mobility, which have been strained due to Cooper\u2019s overall goal of reducing net migration and political pressure from Reform<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018Impossible\u2019 for young people to come to UK<\/strong><\/p>\n

A European diplomatic source said: \u201cYou could have a quota that is set for the first two years and then you look how it\u2019s going.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe UK has youth mobility quotes with Australia that are never reached.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure how many Europeans will rush here despite Nigel Farage thinking millions want to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something that doesn\u2019t need to be set in stone for 100 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

EU sources also criticised Govt\u2019s general approach to migration, saying it\u2019s \u201cpractically impossible for a young person now to come to the UK\u201d, adding that UK demands for caps and time limits are \u201cstringent\u201d and \u201cextremely limiting\u201d.<\/p>\n

The EU source said: \u201cYou have to have a system that is workable, that is attractive to both sides, that delivers a message of reciprocal trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the EU\u2019s criticism, the UK Government is trying to win the domestic argument on youth mobility, circulating research around Labour MPs showing public support for a scheme.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s summit is not expected to produce an agreed youth mobility deal, but a political declaration is likely to commit both sides to negotiating one in future.<\/p>\n

Brexit win on food<\/strong><\/p>\n

Britain is meanwhile expected to bank a Brexit win in the talks on a deal on cross-border agri-food trade \u2013 known as a veterinary or SPS agreement.<\/p>\n

Sources told The i Paper the UK will get a carve-out that ensures animal welfare protections like the live animals export ban can be maintained despite alignment with EU rules on agri-food, which will ease the fears of campaigners that the post-Brexit law may have to be reversed.<\/p>\n

The UK and EU are expected to agree a security and defence deal on Monday, that paves the way for British defence companies to access European rearmament loans for joint projects with member states.<\/p>\n

But the biggest sticking point remaining in talks, which are set to go to the wire with EU ambassadors meeting on Sunday, is an argument over whether fishing rights and agri-food deals should be linked and time limited.<\/p>\n

The UK wants a permanent agri-food deal to provide \u201ccertainty\u201d for businesses, but wants to only grant the EU an extension of fishing rights for four years, arguing that an approach of regular negotiations was agreed between the two sides in the Boris Johnson\u2019s Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA).<\/p>\n

However, the EU is arguing that the agri-food deal should be subject to the same time limit if the UK does not grant permanent fishing rights.<\/p>\n

An EU source said the UK is \u201cusing the same argument as the EU is using for fish\u201d, as the diplomatic source warned that a four-year deal was \u201casking for trouble\u201d as it would expire around the time of the next British general election campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe four years will end in the middle of the next British election campaign, I think that is not a good idea,\u201d the diplomatic source said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the British side it\u2019s not very clever, Labour doesn\u2019t want to have this in the middle of an election campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starmer was on Friday holding crunch talks with key EU figures including Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at Friday\u2019s European Political Community (EPC) summit in Albania that could plot a way through some of the remaining obstacles in reset talks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Softer-Brexit talks are on ‘razor’s edge’ as EU grows frustrated with UK’s ‘unattractive’ demands The EU wants the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,807,6657,3027,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-106492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-keir-starmer","16":"tag-migration","17":"tag-politics-news","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114517998721689601","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}