UK-EU beneficial regulatory alignment and reciprocal youth mobility schemes
This session took place on 14th September 2023, and was split into two halves. The first half covered UK-EU beneficial regulatory alignment, looking at how the UK can begin to bring its regulatory space in line with the EU’s in order to smooth trading frictions. The second half looked at the road to negotiating a reciprocal youth mobility scheme between the UK and EU.
Post Session Report
1. INTRODUCTION
In June 2023, the UK Trade and Business Commission (UKTBC) produced a comprehensive report on the pragmatic steps the UK Government needs to take to improve international trading relationships. The UKTBC blueprint for trade contains 114 distinct recommendations and is the culmination of the evidence taken this year during the programme of sessions and consultation exercise.
This session provided an opportunity to explore two significant policy areas of the report: beneficial alignment with EU standards and regulations, and reciprocal youth labour mobility schemes with EU member states. These recommendations provide two key starting points for improving the UK’s trading relationship with the EU. Together, both policies open up significant ground for further collaboration, cooperation, and partnerships.
The Commission recommends beneficial alignment with the EU, facilitated by a UK-EU Cooperation Council to ease trading frictions with the EU. This session emphasised that the threat of divergence was damaging to UK businesses and set out pathways that make alignment operational.
The Commission also recommends a reciprocal youth mobility scheme with EU member states. This forms part of the picture of increasing mobility between the UK and the EU. Our expert witnesses emphasised the cultural and economic potential of the scheme while also reiterating that it has the potential to improve UK-EU relations on a wider scale.
2. SESSION WITNESSES
PANEL 1: ALIGNMENT
GEORGE PERETZ KC, Monckton Chambers
DANI LOUGHRAN, Managing Director, Aston Chemicals
WILLIAM BAIN, Head of Trade, British Chamber of Commerce
PANEL 2: YOUTH MOBILITY SCHEME
CATHERINE BARNARD, Professor of European and Employment Law, University of Cambridge
MARLEY MORRIS, Associate Director for Migration, Trade and Communities, IPPR
JONATHAN PORTES, Professor of Economic and Public Policy, King’s College London
3. KEY FINDINGS: BENEFICIAL ALIGNMENT
1. The current regulatory relationship between the UK and EU is holding business back. Uncertainty is damaging for businesses and threatening the attractiveness of the UK for investment.
2. Aligning UK and EU regulation would be beneficial as it would provide stability and is a practical necessity of much of our trading relationship with the EU.
3. In order to facilitate beneficial alignment, a UK-EU Cooperation Council is crucial. Institutional powers would protect the regulatory stability of the UK, while also delivering a level of autonomy and building trust with the EU.
3.1 THE CURRENT STATE OF PLAY
When the UK left the EU, to ensure legislative and regulatory consistency, EU regulations became UK law. Like a snapshot, this aligned the UK regulatory framework with EU regulation at the point of departure.
However, in the three years since, there have been multiple forms of divergence - passive, where the UK has not followed changes in EU legislation, and active, such as the UK’s Retained EU Law Act.
Our witnesses outlined that there has not been a clear approach to regulation post-Brexit. This has created uncertainty and kept the UK’s regulatory framework in a state of volatility. The threat of divergence is limiting business and investment confidence in the UK.
“ It’s been a piecemeal approach and there is no overarching public concept or theory or policy indeed which I think is applicable to the way the UK Government has done it [...] you have a sort of patchwork quilt of different approaches.” - WILLIAM BAIN, HEAD OF TRADE, BRITISH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
“ That’s just a massive amount of risk that only applies to UK businesses, so it’s a unique disadvantage to UK manufacturers and a disincentive to invest in the UK or manufacturing in the UK.” - DANI LOUGHRAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ASTON CHEMICALS
Without alignment with EU regulations, UK businesses have to operate on two systems of regulation if they want to export to the EU. While this has created its own complexity, there continues to be the risk of further divergence which will only increase costs and reduce exports.
“ The idea of the two systems diverging even further and those two systems being more different is just more work, more complexity, and more disincentive to anyone wanting to manufacture in the UK.” - DANI LOUGHRAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ASTON CHEMICALS
“ Continuing with this current approach that the UK Government has had is simply going to see costs rise and export opportunities become reduced.” - WILLIAM BAIN, HEAD OF TRADE, BRITISH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
While the UK Government does have the power to diverge significantly from the EU and to implement its own regulatory frameworks, there has been little action to show initiative or vision for the UK’s regulatory future.
“ So, you’ve got specific Acts of Parliament that actually confer very wide powers on the Government to regulate, there’s a typical pattern of this legislation, it's very broad powers being given to Ministers to more or less regulate as they like. And what’s interesting about the use of quite a lot of those powers in a number of areas [...] is that those powers have scarcely been used in practice, so that the regime remains very much as it was when we left the EU, very little in the way of substantive change.” - GEORGE PERETZ KC, MONCKTON CHAMBERS
Across all sectors of the UK, there has been little clarity about how the UK Government will exercise these powers and what they intend to do with them.
“ There are some very important fundamental areas where we’ve not heard any view from the UK Government about their plans” - WILLIAM BAIN, HEAD OF TRADE, BRITISH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
Dani Loughran, Managing Director of Aston Chemicals, provided examples of how this failure to establish a regulatory direction has played out. UK industry is forced to manage two separate regulatory systems in order to continue trading with our nearest and biggest partner:
“ What we’ve got at the moment is at least a kind of halfway house, a transition period [...] We are having to manage two systems because the UK is a relatively small market, manufacturers in the UK do need to sell into Europe, it is our biggest and closest market, we really can’t get away with that, so anyone using chemicals in the UK, those chemicals really have to still be EU Reach registered and that work has already been done, we already have all that, we’ve spent billions of dollars, pounds, yen, whatever getting those registrations done and so that’s not going to go away.” - DANI LOUGHRAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ASTON CHEMICALS
This uncertainty applies across UK industries and is driving business and investment away from the UK.
“ We have a huge market on our doorstep, all of our competition is also there, they are just carrying on without us and my worry is this is happening fast and nobody is moving fast enough in the UK, no one is taking this problem seriously enough and we’re just going to haemorrhage more and more manufacturing out of the UK and into the EU, and we’re already seeing it happening.” - DANI LOUGHRAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ASTON CHEMICALS
3.2 THE IMPACT OF BENEFICIAL ALIGNMENT
The UK Trade and Business Commission recommends that the UK adopt a general policy of regulatory alignment with EU standards and regulations, making exceptions for cases where it is not in the UK's interests to do so. This is not only a practical reality of trading with the EU, but also an approach that provides international regulatory harmonisation while still allowing for the autonomy of divergence.
Our witnesses highlighted that alignment reduces the cost of doing business in the UK and has the potential to reduce pressures at the border.
“ Alignment by default which might well be where we’re kind of heading to over the next few years, it would certainly give business a lot more certainty, it would certainly make things predictable and offer a sort of reasonable landing spot.” - WILLIAM BAIN, HEAD OF TRADE, BRITISH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
“ There are enormous advantages in having the same rules applicable and not having for example you get two sets of legal advice, to devise two sets of manufacturing processes or two sets of processes for checking for the way in which you supply services to different clients. Therefore, there is a virtue in itself in having the same rules applicable in the EU and the UK in that it reduces the costs of doing business in the UK.” - GEORGE PERETZ KC, MONCKTON CHAMBERS
“ Another set of potential advantages of having the same rule book is that you no longer need regulatory checks at the border because on either side of the border, the same rules apply, so a widget that is in circulation on the market in the UK could in principle wouldn’t need to have checks and that’s a sort of second aspect of alignment that is much more difficult for the UK to achieve unilaterally.” - GEORGE PERETZ KC, MONCKTON CHAMBERS
“ I would see it as more of a sort of mitigatory mechanism to ensure that we don’t have the potentially disastrous effects of sharply increasing export costs” - WILLIAM BAIN, HEAD OF TRADE, BRITISH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
As the threat of divergence is a unique disadvantage to UK businesses, alignment would create a level-playing field for UK manufacturers trading with the EU. From a chemical regulatory perspective, it also reduces the duplication of safety checks, which cuts down bureaucracy and animal testing.
“ What we’d really like is for there to be a level playing field for UK manufacturers with our EU competition and that really means none of this extra bureaucracy, work and cost and animal testing potentially, so yes, a default alignment where we just follow what EU Reach is doing or what ECA are doing would be great” - DANI LOUGHRAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ASTON CHEMICALS
3.3 CREATING MEANINGFUL ALIGNMENT
A system of beneficial regulatory alignment can offer opportunities for managed divergence and dialogue. However there needs to be significant institutional, bilateral cooperation to address this - as even if the regulations are the same but the interpretation of regulation is different, this has the potential to cause friction unless a specific regulatory trajectory for both parties is agreed on.
“ Even if your rule book ends up looking exactly the same, you may, in the end, find that in practice the regulation is different, either because the Courts have applied it differently or the regulators have applied it differently or you don’t have quite the same guidance on each side of the Channel. So, if you want a system of reliable alignment you’ve got to address that institutional di culty as well, which probably would almost inevitably involve some agreement with the EU at some level” - GEORGE PERETZ KC, MONCKTON CHAMBERS
“ It isn’t good enough just to have the same text, we need to be sure your Courts are interpreting the same way and we need to be sure your regulators are following the same guidance” - GEORGE PERETZ KC, MONCKTON CHAMBERS
“ [Alignment] means that you don’t deliberately legislate in a way that departs from the EU Law that we’ve already inherited and that’s in a sense relatively easy to do, you just don’t diverge deliberately. Another aspect that’s much more di cult which is you’ve also got to move with the EU because EU itself is moving, it’s not frozen in aspic as it was in December 2020. On one level that’s relatively straightforward in that you can track what the EU is legislating and just put it into your own system, although you need a proper set of statutory powers in order to deal with that” - GEORGE PERETZ KC, MONCKTON CHAMBERS
The UK Trade and Business Commission recommends a UK-EU Regulatory Cooperation Council to facilitate mutual cooperation on areas of divergence. This would be modelled on the successful US/Canadian council and create a forum for constructive dialogue on regulatory issues. This body would have statutory powers to confront the institutional action needed to maintain alignment and to facilitate mutual consent for divergence with the EU.
“ If you’re going to have a sort of bilateral regulatory alignment mechanism which is underpinned by Treaty, then you’ve got to deal with the issues about how regulators will interact with each other, I mean the TCA involves an element of regulatory cooperation and that’s possible, but cooperation is not the same as the type of contact that would be required if you’re going to have a sort of meaningful alignment that doesn’t just mitigate future business costs.” - WILLIAM BAIN, HEAD OF TRADE, BRITISH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
“ We’d urge Government to have a clear consistent statement on regulatory alignment, the preference being to align in areas where traded goods are involved. We would urge at least the beginning of negotiations on an SPS agreement could take a good while, would also help I think the situation in Northern Ireland and particularly the inbound border controls we have in Great Britain as well, so that would be a key priority. Regulatory Cooperation Council, we think, is critical.” - WILLIAM BAIN, HEAD OF TRADE, BRITISH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
Alignment and cooperation will help rebuild regulatory capacity in areas where the UK is currently unable to independently regulate, such as UK REACH. This will benefit both the UK and the EU.
“ There are whole sets of other areas where regulation, particularly where you’re thinking about investigation where it’s extremely sensible for regulators to be talking to each other to make sure that the investigations on both sides are as effective and as cost-effective as possible. So that’s a very good idea.” - GEORGE PERETZ KC, MONCKTON CHAMBERS
Of course, building a bilateral agreement with the EU on regulatory cooperation requires the EU to see the value of deepening its post-Brexit relationship with the UK.
Our witnesses explored the political reality of the relationship, expressing that the EU may feel reluctant to cooperate with the UK. In contrast, it was raised that in some areas the UK has a lot to offer the EU.
EU businesses are doing very well out of the current situation, a lot of our manufacturing has moved into the EU, so they might come under lobbying pressure from their own industries saying 'don’t let them back, they decided to go, tough luck'” - DANI LOUGHRAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ASTON CHEMICALS
“ The UK medicines regulatory agency was a very respected agency within the EU system, you see it did an awful lot of work as it happens for the European Medicines Agency and not just because the MA, used to be located just down the road in Canary Wharf, but just generally because the MHRA is a really good regulatory authority with a lot of expertise. I’m sure at one level the EU would welcome having the MHRA back in the system, to enable more cooperation than is currently possible.” - GEORGE PERETZ KC, MONCKTON CHAMBERS
“ If you’re going to seriously try and achieve that level of regulatory alignment in a large variety of areas without joining the Single Market and without joining the EU itself, you are asking a huge amount of the EU and that has got therefore it seems to me to be that request has got to be made in the context of a much wider offer to the EU about improving the relationship in the interests of both sides, it will include issues such as defence and security, it will include an offer of the ways that the UK can help in relation to the achievement of the EU’s objectives of net zero and the green transition, strategic autonomy, all these are areas where the UK actually has quite a lot to offer.” - GEORGE PERETZ KC, MONCKTON CHAMBERS
To align effectively with the EU on an institutional level there will be trade-offs. The UK must be prepared to show significant commitment to being a reliable and trusted trading partner with the EU.
“ If you’re going to align effectively by which I mean get the benefits of effectively being in the Single Market, not having regulatory checks and the EU accepts your goods or your services to be treated in the same way as an EU goods or service, you’ve got to accept that the institutional consequences which go with that, which will be some form of CJEU type resolution, either that or the EFTA Court possible, role for the Commission and so on, and that involves dropping the obsession with hoarding sovereignty which has been the hallmark of the current Government. I sometimes call them sovereignty misers, they hoard sovereignty but are never prepared to spend it in order to achieve real benefits, you’ve got to drop that approach.” - GEORGE PERETZ KC, MONCKTON CHAMBERS
The UK does have a unique relationship with the EU for a number of reasons, meaning that there is no reason that a regulatory cooperation agreement between the two countries could not be both ambitious and unlike any other regulatory relationship that the EU has.
“ It seems to me that any deal the United Kingdom has is likely to be sui generis because the UK’s relationship with the EU is sui generis, not just as a rather larger and different country than several of the other countries with which the EU has agreements but also, of course, our relationship with Ireland and with Northern Ireland that means that that has to always be thought about and other factors as well.” - GEORGE PERETZ KC, MONCKTON CHAMBERS
4. KEY FINDINGS: YOUTH MOBILITY SCHEMES
1. Youth mobility has been damaged by Brexit, which has significantly changed the visa and mobility landscape in the UK.
2. Improving youth mobility has the potential to improve the UK’s relationship with the EU, but it can also support business in the UK. Following the discussion in the first half of the session, youth mobility schemes should be part of the package offered to the EU to strengthen relationships. The UK Trade and Business Commission is recommending the creation of a reciprocal youth mobility scheme between the UK and EU for 18-35 year olds for a period of up to 5 years.
3. The UK Government should actively review youth mobility schemes to ensure that they are accessible.
4.1 THE CURRENT STATE OF PLAY
Leaving the EU has damaged mobility between the UK and the EU. As a result, the UK has shifted focus to non-EU countries and expanded youth mobility schemes to strengthen trading relationships with new partners.
“ I mean the most prominent has been Australia and New Zealand as part of those trade deals and primarily they’ve been around extending the age for youth mobility schemes up from 30 to 35. I mean Australia’s case we’re moving some of the specific work requirements, in New Zealand’s case extending the youth mobility from two years to three years and bringing up a higher cap on visas. We’ve also seen a deal between the UK and Canada to extend the scheme similarly and finally, we’ve seen a deal with India, a specific deal for an Indian youth professional scheme ballot with 3,000 places which is seen as an olive branch for India as part of the ongoing trade negotiations. So primarily the deals have been with countries outside the EU and EEA.” - MARLEY MORRIS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR MIGRATION, TRADE AND COMMUNITIES, IPPR
“ The UK’s focus has been outside of the EU, it seems that despite efforts by the Government they haven’t been able to make much progress on negotiations within the EU and the EEA to secure those agreements other than as I said Iceland.” - MARLEY MORRIS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR MIGRATION, TRADE AND COMMUNITIES, IPPR
As outlined by our witness, the expansion of youth mobility is a significant boost to the political relationships between countries and has played an important part in securing trade deals with Australia and New Zealand and laying the groundwork for India and Canada.
The UK has also replaced Freedom of Movement with increased work visas. These have mainly been popular with non-EU citizens and has not succeeded in attracting EU citizens compared to when Freedom of Movement applied to the UK.
“ The broad pattern suggests of course there’s been very significant increases in work visas, particularly in health and social care and there have been, largely that’s been from non-EU citizens that have been relatively low take up of EU citizens of those visas. And relatively low take up of visas in particular industries where EU citizens were previously working, so hospitality and food manufacturing, and that’s because the nature of the skilled work visa means it’s very difficult for people to be recruited into those jobs because of the skills threshold and the salary thresholds attached to those visas.” - MARLEY MORRIS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR MIGRATION, TRADE AND COMMUNITIES, IPPR
“ We have largely replaced the workers we’ve lost from outside, from within the EU with workers from outside the EU” - JONATHAN PORTES, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC AND PUBLIC POLICY, KING’S COLLEGE LONDON
4.2 MAKING THE SCHEME ACCESSIBLE
Our witnesses highlighted that the youth mobility schemes are a suitable model of temporary work visas to expand to Europe as they are relatively flexible compared to other visa pathways.
“ They are relatively flexible compared to some of the other schemes because they do not require sponsorship and there are no sponsorship fees for employers. So, in particular, you think about small businesses, it’s a lot easier for them to recruit people on the youth mobility visa compared to on the skilled worker visa. So, there’s some degree of flexibility, also probably less risk of exploitation of people on those visas because individuals have the flexibility to move between jobs and aren’t attached to their employer as part of their visa requirements.” - MARLEY MORRIS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR MIGRATION, TRADE AND COMMUNITIES, IPPR
The UK Trade and Business Commission also acknowledges that the UK Government must be receptive to barriers to access to the scheme. In order to provide a genuine form of mobility, it must be affordable, not overly bureaucratic, and suit the needs of young people and employers.
In our session, witnesses outlined that the current costs are a barrier to some young people interested in coming to the UK. There are also concerns about how you ensure that temporary visitors integrate with communities as through this scheme there is no route to permanent residency.
“ You’ve got to go through a process and there are quite strict requirements including the fact you’ve got to have a certain minimum amount in savings, currently it’s about 2,500. But the cost is not to be sniffed at. The cost for coming in, the application fee is £259, but in addition, there is the healthcare surcharge, which is £470 a year, so if you’re here for two years that’s £940. And then there’s one or two schemes that allow you to extend for another year so of course that would be adding another £470 to the cost. So that shouldn’t be disregarded.” - CATHERINE BARNARD, PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN AND EMPLOYMENT LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
“ There’s also concerns over integration and the risk of a youth mobility scheme and the key difference in a way between that and freedom of movement is that it’s inherently temporary and so there is some evidence to suggest that communities can find it harder to manage and prefer longer term routes that allow people to settle rather than short-term churn in their communities, and that can be di cult for people as well who might not have the time to be able to learn language and settle and integrate into the workplace and into their local areas.” - MARLEY MORRIS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR MIGRATION, TRADE AND COMMUNITIES, IPPR
The UK Trade and Business Commission recommends that youth mobility schemes with the EU should be expanded up until the age of 35. Our witnesses agreed, particularly highlighting the impact the pandemic has had on young people in the UK and in the EU.
“ I would make youth young, but not too young, I’d go up to 35 at least, and particularly, and joking apart, bearing in mind that the generations that are coming through have been badly affected by Covid and things that would’ve been done at a younger age in the past are now being done at an older age. We see this with the students, the students who are starting as Freshers are much less well equipped to start university than their predecessors five years before, and so I would absolutely make youth up to at least 35.” - CATHERINE BARNARD, PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN AND EMPLOYMENT LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
4.3 CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE
Decreasing the appropriate mobility routes between the UK and the EU is a significant blow to their overall relationship. As our closest trading partners and neighbours, political and cultural relationships are significant to businesses.
The UK Trade and Business Commission recommends a youth mobility scheme negotiated with EU Member States, as a first step towards improving the UK visa system and restoring some ease of mobility across the continent. Ultimately, the UK Trade and Business Commission would like to see the negotiation of a youth mobility scheme at UK-EU level.
Our witnesses made it clear how significant youth mobility is to developing and maintaining the UK’s soft power.
“ I think we can all say that some of our earliest experiences of European or other countries was through a school trip” - CATHERINE BARNARD, PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN AND EMPLOYMENT LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
“ We are talking about it to promote cultural interchange, to promote the exchange of young people, leading to changing ideas, leading to these lifelong connections, which might in some cases lead to some degree of labour and mobility at some point” - JONATHAN PORTES, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC AND PUBLIC POLICY, KING’S COLLEGE LONDON
“ [Youth mobility] is more broadly about rebuilding our historic, social and cultural and political connection with Europe.” - JONATHAN PORTES, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC AND PUBLIC POLICY, KING’S COLLEGE LONDON
“ The loss of soft power and influence by not allowing kids to come and see the Houses of Parliament and Holyrood and so forth is really damaging long-term. And I think it’s a bare minimum, that’s the least we could do particularly for school trips” - CATHERINE BARNARD, PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN AND EMPLOYMENT LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
“ We think we are culturally part of Europe and part of you know maintaining those cultural social links and this is not an economic argument, at least not in the short-term, is about having something that is much easier, whether it’s for 15-year olds or 20-year olds, whatever, so that you know people can just come and go without these barriers.” - JONATHAN PORTES, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC AND PUBLIC POLICY, KING’S COLLEGE LONDON
While the priority for some of our witnesses was for youth mobility to be considered within the scope of cultural international relationships, the scheme also has significant economic benefits.
“ It is worth highlighting though that the Migration Advisory Committee has on a number of times highlighted that if the Government does want to kind of ease some of the pressures in the labour market, particularly in areas like hospitality, there are particular advantages of using youth mobility schemes potentially to help do that and there are a few potential reasons for that. One is that young people tend to be more likely to make a net fiscal contribution so they’re broader fiscal benefits. Secondly as I mentioned and linking to the point about exploitation, the flexibility in the visa does I think reduce the risk of exploitation and broader undercutting and so there’s a case for having that. Obviously, the fact that it’s temporary does play a risk potentially of exploitation but the fact that you’ve got the ability to shift between jobs and you’re not attached to a particular employer I think helps significantly. It’s also easier to administer for small businesses.” - MARLEY MORRIS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR MIGRATION, TRADE AND COMMUNITIES, IPPR
Achieving a youth mobility scheme requires bilateral negotiations between the UK and EU member states. However, due to the current relationship between the UK and EU there are likely to be complications.
“ The principal problem that the UK Government is going to face negotiating these schemes country by country is that the countries, the member states are under huge pressure from the EU Commission not to do it. Now, this is a political issue dressed up as a legal one, the legal issue is that member states have the competence, legal competence to negotiate these schemes, and so if you just looked at it as a lawyer you’d say well of course member states can agree to do this, but the Commission doesn’t want the states to be negotiating these schemes because they recognise that this is a card that the UK will try to play in any future negotiation as part of the TCA.” - CATHERINE BARNARD, PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN AND EMPLOYMENT LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Despite this, pursuing youth mobility with EU member states will demonstrate that the UK is interested in improving mobility and is open to creating suitable opportunities for young people to live and work in the UK.
“ It must be said still a sense of hostile environment, and for me, one of the great benefits of having a proper and generous youth mobility scheme which is not hand-tied in the way that the existing ones are is to show that we are welcoming to young people and we are genuinely open for business.” - CATHERINE BARNARD, PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN AND EMPLOYMENT LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Our witnesses highlighted that youth mobility could sit as a broader package that highlights the strengths the UK has to offer for young people in terms of culture and education.
“ I think it would be helpful to see this as a broader package which combines collaboration on research and universities, cultural exchange with youth mobility, as Catherine noted earlier there may be less appetite among EU countries for youth mobility in and of itself because they’ve got free movement within the EU27 and so being able to access the UK is of perhaps less interest versus our interest in being able to have youth exchange with the EU. And so I think looking at a broader offer and thinking about where the UK really has strong assets and things it can offer, particularly in the context of for instance its universities, what would be a good way to go to try and seek a beneficial deal, for instance could it be attached to a broader arrangement with participation as associate third country in Erasmus, could an offer be made around the university fees for EU citizens, Catherine made the point earlier on ID cards and schoolchildren, I think if this was a broader package that the UK could offer which could perhaps unlock progress here.” - MARLEY MORRIS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR MIGRATION, TRADE AND COMMUNITIES, IPPR