LONDON — Britain vowed to patch things up with the EU. Now for the hard part.
Brussels and London committed to a youth mobility deal at this May’s much-hyped EU “reset” summit, with the details to be thrashed out in long-running talks.
On one point, there’s already a flashing red light.
Signing up to an uncapped EU youth mobility scheme — which would give British and European youngsters the right to live abroad for a time-limited period — under the deal would put the U.K. government in “very clear breach” of Labour’s manifesto commitment to reduce net migration, the chair of the U.K. government’s Migration Advisory Committee has warned.
Brian Bell, a professor of economics at King’s College London, told a hearing of the U.K. Business and Trade Commission this month that it was “utterly implausible” that the government — which wants a capped scheme — would sign up, despite EU demands to do so.
The U.K. and EU committed to a new youth mobility program at this May’s EU reset summit — but the details are still to be worked out.
London wants the scheme to include a hard cap on numbers, fearful of the effect on politically sensitive net migration statistics. Brussels says it doesn’t need one.
‘A very clear breach’
Bell, a professor of economics at King’s College London, told a hearing of the U.K. Business and Trade Commission this month that many more Europeans would likely come to the U.K. under an uncapped scheme then Brits who would go abroad.
“The government would be in breach, very clear breach, of its manifesto commitment to reduce net migration if it agreed to anything like that,” he argued.
“So I just don’t think that’s possible. I don’t think any political party, or any politician that’s likely to be in power, would agree to that.”
The chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, an independent non-departmental public body of six senior academics that advises the British government on migration issues, explained his reasoning.
“There are six or seven times as many Europeans as there are Brits. So if the probability of wanting to move is the same for Brits as it is for Europeans, you’d have seven times as many Europeans coming here as leaving in that world. Suppose 50,000 Brits wanted to go every year. The equivalent will be 350,000 Europeans arriving,” he said.
“Net migration will be 300,000 up in the first three years of the scheme, when you’re getting the new cohorts arriving, and you’d have a 900,000 additional people in the UK, once you got steady state, and that would be a big effect on net migration.”
The agreement to set up a scheme, signed at a landmark summit at Lancaster House in May, doesn’t explicitly include a cap, only stating that the scheme will “ensure that the overall number of participants is acceptable to both sides.”
But Keir Starmer and his EU Relations Minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds, have repeatedly said that they’ll only sign up to a scheme with a hard limit on numbers.
EU officials believe there are other ways to keep everyone happy when it comes to numbers.
“The Youth Mobility Scheme is not about free movement,” one EU official told POLITICO. “We are talking about an age-limited, time-limited mobility, subject to the fulfillment of certain conditions to be checked before the mobility can take place.”
Assumptions
Bell’s example figures are based on the core assumption that people in the U.K. and EU would have the same propensity to make use of the scheme. However, there’s little data to say for certain whether that would be the case, either way.
Historic numbers for the Erasmus program — a different, but related exchange scheme — seem to suggest that British young people may have a higher propensity to move across the channel.
Between 2014 and 2020, Erasmus took around 113,000 British students, while the U.K. hosted 190,000 EU students through the program. While higher, that’s far from seven times as many. The estimate may not tell the whole story.
There are also currently more European citizens leaving the U.K. than arriving — 95,000 a year in net emigration, according to the government’s own statistics.
Capped is fine
Crucially, Bell reckons there’s no such issue with a capped scheme, which the U.K. government is happy to sign up to.
“If it’s a balanced scheme, my guess is the overall effect on net migration is essentially zero, essentially all the time. And so it’s not worth worrying about,” he told the same meeting.
He also dismissed hints by Chancellor Rachel Reeves that a scheme could be a major boost for the economy.
“We issue 25,000 youth mobility visas at the moment [to non-EU countries] per year. 35 million people work in the UK. It’s a drop in the ocean.” He said it was important not to “over-egg” the economic benefits.
Labour’s manifesto at the election last year said a government led by the party “will reduce net migration.” The figure, which takes into account the number of people moving both to and from the U.K., has already fallen sharply to 431,000 in 2024, around half the level in the year to June 2023, when it peaked at a historic high of 906,000. Labour took office in July 2024.
Brussels’ Brexit reset demands put Keir Starmer in a migration bind
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