Negotiations to facilitate youth mobility between EU & UK

Brexit
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Press Release here: Press corner | European Commission

The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union has hit young people in the EU and the UK who would like to study, work and live abroad particularly hard. Today, we take the first step towards an ambitious but realistic agreement between the EU and the UK that would fix this issue. Our aim is to rebuild human bridges between young Europeans on both sides of the Channel.

Maroš Šefčovič, Executive Vice-President for European Green Deal, Interinstitutional Relations and Foresight

Early days still but I can’t help think that the Commission has recognised that a new Government will be in power in the UK soon, and that Starmer is more open to rebuilding burnt bridges than Sunak, Truss, Johnson or May ever were.

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Also, a useful summary here too… Thread by @StevePeers on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App

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They discussed exactly the same thing about a year ago, and nothing came of it, so not sure if it will move ahead or not. I guess if you’re 31, you’re considered old. :slight_smile:
Personally I think it would be a good thing for young people to have some more options.

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Apparently not - from this evening’s Connexion on this possibility subject

'However, the UK government says it is “not introducing an EU-wide scheme”, though it is “open” to such deals with individual EU states, as it already has ‘youth mobility’ schemes with other countries such as Australia and New Zealand. Such deals would be bilateral, and only “where it’s in the UK’s interest and supports the skills and opportunities of our youth”.

“Free movement within the EU was ended and there are no plans to introduce it,” a government spokesperson said.

Labour, widely forecast to win the coming general election, also says it looks too much like a return to free movement and it has “no plans” to negotiate such a deal.’

Unbelievable!

Such a gulf between EU and UK attitudes and thinking

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Of course “no plans” doesn’t mean they won’t, it just means they don’t want to present an attack vector to the Tories.

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Although I agree that Labour want to keep the “B” word out of the debate (though why I’m not sure - there is ample to attack the Tories on over the manifest damage Brexit has caused without even mentioning what their own policy might, or might not be).

But, depressingly, Labour has come back with this clusterfeck of a response:

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I’ve tried to resist sliding inexorably to the conclusion that no party has a vision for the future of the country - but I’m getting there.

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At some point people will just have to accept that the UK is many years away from a more meaningful relationship with the EU.

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But why?

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It will look like free-movement is being instigated by the back door and relatively few brits actually want it.

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I’m starting to think maybe the UK deserves all the shit that’s coming its way. I say that despite still having family and friends living in the UK.

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I see this written and quoted a lot but what does it mean in practical terms that will affect the average Brit enough that they will actually notice? FOM is perhaps the part of the EU/UK split that is most often mentioned but in reality how many suffer from it’s loss?

Re-joining the EU or just having closer ties is not high on the list of things that most people worry about, it’s the NHS, the economy, pot holes etc and until that changes there won’t be the political will to push for it.

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That’s true for many people. They’re thinking more about today than tomorrow, and you can’t blame them. Been in the UK this week and can attest that there’s a lot of talk about immediate issues, but I’ve heard none about Brexit related issues.

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That’s the real tragedy of Brexit, and something that Brexiters take a perverse delight in… Planes didn’t immediately drop out of the sky when the UK left the EU, metaphorically-speaking. Instead, we’re seeing the decline of a country due to gradualism play out before our eyes, or death by a thousand cuts, if you prefer… or boiling frog syndrome.

Those potholes didn’t occur because of Brexit, they were caused by the cold and wet weather in the UK, plus heavy road use. However, since Brexit, they aren’t being repaired as quickly or in so many numbers because of pressure on local government budgets, which is due to decreased funding in real terms by central government, which is a result of a poorer economy.

The cost of living crisis facing people in the UK is driven by high inflation (I’m going to scream if I hear another politician wrongly infer that a fall in inflation leads to cheaper prices…!), notably caused by food and energy. Over half of the food the UK relies on to feed the nation is imported - thanks again to the cold and wet weather in the UK. Non tariff barriers introduced due to Brexit have caused retailers to increase their prices to offset the higher costs to import food. This has a knock-on effect on wages, which in turns leads to higher prices, etc…

Brexiters usually at this point shout about Covid, or the invasion of Ukraine, or ships being attacked in the red sea, etc… Those things all admittedly had an impact too. But the Brexiters don’t like to admit that Brexit too is having a negative impact, and unlike those other events, it’s not going away.

Unfortunately, as demonstrated by countless vox pops, a proportion of the average man (and woman) on the street seems incapable or perhaps unwilling to join the dots however.

Edited to Add: actually, thinking about this some more, I wonder whether it’s perhaps not an unwillingness to admit Brexit was a mistake, but moreso that people saw how divisive it made the country and so are unwilling to reopen that particular wound just yet.

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Spot on - your post is a 100% accurate summary of what Brexit is all about.

Phil Moorhouse (A Different Bias on YouTube) was suggesting last night that Labour are staying resolutely off any mention of Brexit until after the election because a) they don’t want to lose any Labour Brexit voters this time round and b) adding Brexit into the election debate would act as a distraction from the core issues (the economy, NHS, housing, etc) and reopen old wounds.

He pointed out that Labour do have policies in place for closer alignment with the EU in future, so one can only hope that they speed that up and make it more explicit once the election is done and dusted.

Their priority now is to grind the Conservatives into as small a set of dust particles as possible, not to rerun 2016.

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But it’s not the sole cause of any of the ills currently afflicting the UK so people aren’t that bothered we’ve left the EU.

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And yet the polls show a majority want to rejoin…

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Source: https://deltapoll.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Deltapoll-240415_trackers.pdf

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For my sins I watch Prime Minister’s Questions. I remember back in the Boris Johnson era when Starmer would play the long game and set traps that Johnson would wilfully and blindly walk into, only to be caught out several weeks later. One has to hope (for the sake of the UK) that he’s doing something similar now too, and that all will be revealed later at which point there’ll be a huge collective sigh of relief :grin:

I’m starting to lose faith in Labour otherwise.

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Ask the same people if the government of the day should focus on re-joining the EU or fixing the economy, the NHS, education, transport etc and you’ll get a completely different set of results.

If the voting public were that concerned they would be on the streets week after week demanding a new referendum and Labour would not be taking the stance on the EU that they have. I’ll go further and say that Labour will get slaughtered if after a couple of years they do a massive U-turn, having waited 14 years to back into power there is no way they’re going to risk losing in 2029 by pushing to re-join.

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I think we’re probably mostly in agreement here - although perhaps not on how big a difference it would be.

It will take a charismatic leader to convince the population that it would be worth rejoining precisely because it can lead to fixing the economy, the NHS, education, transport, etc. Not least because the recent bunch of PMs have been populists that promised things they couldn’t deliver.

Possibly. But they’ll also be aware that the younger generation are massively in favour of rejoining the EU too.

I’m not sure what age you are, Tim. I’m (only just!) in my 40s, and amongst all my friends there’s a tiny minority who voted Leave. Amongst my son’s peers, nobody at all is in favour of it whatsoever.

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I think we should remember that he is a lawyer who used to run the Crown Prosecution Service. Probably quite good at strategy one would assume, despite the lack of charisma.

I don’t think they will do an obvious U-turn, I think it will be done very gradually, with more and more alignment happening over a period of years with a bunch of innocuous-looking and boring legislation on trade tariffs, customs agreements, etc. thus not giving the Brexiteer rump anything to get its teeth into.

At some point it will become obvious that the next step is to formally rejoin the EU by which time the UK public will probably shrug its shoulders and say “OK so what?”.

Demographics are on the side of Rejoin - it was predominantly older voters who backed Leave, and those joining the voting pool are overwhelmingly pro-European.

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