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Britain is in a standoff with Brussels over a demand to cut university tuition fees for European students, in a row that threatens to scupper Keir Starmer’s planned EU reset.
EU officials say European students should pay “home” fees of about £9,500 a year as part of the negotiations over a youth mobility scheme, rather than the higher international rate, which can rise above £60,000.
However, British negotiators say they have been blindsided by the demand, which they say was not mentioned in the framework agreement signed last year and would cost British universities an estimated £140m a year.
Sources say the disagreement has brought talks to a near standstill with just three months left before a summit in Brussels in late June or early July.
The prime minister is planning to use that summit to announce a series of agreements on trade and travel designed to bolster his argument that closer ties with the EU are needed to boost the UK’s economic growth.
One said: “It is true that talks have stalled and that this is now the main issue on which both sides cannot agree.”
A British government spokesperson said: “Any final [youth mobility] scheme must be time-limited, capped and will be based on our existing youth mobility schemes, which do not include access to home tuition fee status.”
One British source described the idea of a reduction in tuition fees as a “non-starter”.
The European Commission would not comment on negotiations, though a spokesperson said: “The United Kingdom and the EU have underlined and reaffirmed their commitment to implementing the outcomes of the May 2025 summit in a timely manner. We will work together on our continued discussions in areas of shared interest.”
Starmer kicked off talks on a range of subjects last year as part of what ministers said was a “historic” agreement to improve the terms of the Brexit deal 10 years after the UK first voted to leave the EU.
The prime minister has put closer EU relations at the heart of his economic plan, something the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will further emphasise in a lecture on Tuesday spelling out the government’s growth strategy.
Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister, who is in charge of the negotiations, is due in Brussels on Monday to underline the government’s position in front of a joint meeting of members from the British and European parliaments.
But in the negotiating room, agreement is proving hard to come by, with officials toiling over three potential deals: one covering trade in food and agricultural products; one covering carbon emissions; and one expanding visa freedoms for young people.
Sources briefed on the talks say the agricultural trade deal is close to completion after European officials accepted that Britain could keep its higher animal welfare standards as part of any agreement.
Discussions on the carbon emissions deal, which would link the carbon emission trading schemes in the UK and EU and avoid Britain having to pay a cross-border carbon tax, are also thought to be well advanced. However, the youth mobility scheme, which ministers have rebadged as a youth experience scheme to dispel fears about higher levels of migration, is causing a major stumbling block.
EU leaders have instructed Brussels officials to negotiate over reducing the fees for all European students in return for accepting British demands of a two-year time limit on the scheme and a limit on numbers of fewer than 100,000 a year. The instruction was handed over as part of the formal negotiating mandate given earlier this year by the European Council to the European Commission, which carries out the talks.
Sources in Brussels say that since Brexit, the proportion of European students in the UK has fallen from 27% to 5%, and they argue that the European middle-class is being priced out of a British university education.
But UK officials say that while a cap and a time limit were explicitly referenced in last year’s agreement, a reduction in fees was not. They say that if the government accepted Brussels’ demand it would require a “really big” concession in return beyond the requirements the government had already set out.
UK officials are keen to make the scheme more flexible than the EU is proposing, for example by allowing participants to change between work, study or simply travelling as they wish.
Mark Corver, an analyst of university funding and director at Campus Numerics, said setting fees for EU students at the same level as British students’ would cost the sector £140m in the first year, and £400m across the three-year period of a typical course.
Jamie Arrowsmith, the director of Universities UK International, said: “We fully support the government’s position on home fee status. This would carry a very significant cost and risks undermining the financial sustainability of universities, which would not be in the best interests of the UK or the EU, or prospective students.”
