There is great pressure coming from the EU towards the UK to allow freedom of movement to under thirty-year-olds, but is it triples-all-round that the positive soundbites declare? Just scratch the surface and the benefits look decidedly one-way — and yet Keir Starmer looks set to succumb to the latest EU trap.

It was back in April 2024 that the EU Commission proposed a Youth Mobility Scheme which would, at first glance, make it easier for young EU and UK citizens to live, work and study in the UK and the EU respectively. The Conservative government rejected the proposal, stating that as free movement had ended with the UK’s departure from the EU, it did not want any post-Brexit mobility deal with the EU. Noticeably, Keir Starmer also rejected the idea at the time, but is now believed to be willing to capitulate on the issue to help “reset” EU-UK relationships.

Now, a leaked copy of an EU “working paper” seen by the Financial Times has revealed the youth mobility scheme is one of the EU’s top priorities in unpicking the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement (TCA), so Brussels gains new concessions the UK was unwilling to make at the time. What the UK might gain from such a reset is unknown, as the Labour Government has never said what it actually wants that we don’t already have (such as mutual recognition of standards for Northern Ireland and financial services, for starters).

A more detailed look at the original EU youth mobility proposal revealed it was heavily loaded in the EU’s favour. There would be no cap on overall numbers — of which the vast majority would be from the 27 EU member states that could all visit Britain for a three year period — against the UK citizens that would be restricted to accessing only one EU member state. Most controversially, UK student tuition fees to EU students would be charged at “home student” rates and the immigration health surcharge would be waived to EU applicants so that use of the NHS would be free.

Now, work is proceeding within the EU to make the scheme a requirement before any reset at all, rebranding it as a “Youth Experience Scheme”; the topic was high on the agenda during an October meeting between Keir Starmer and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels and is expected to be a formal proposal when they next meet.

The UK already has a Youth Mobility visa that applies for up to two years to 18-35 year-olds from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Korea and those aged 18-30 from Iceland, Japan and Uruguay, with a separate scheme for young Indian professionals. Eligibility requires proof of £2,530 to provide personal support, carries an application fee of £298 and a healthcare surcharge of £776 per year (£1,552 for the Indian scheme). The schemes allow education, employment or tourism but do not include family members or provide rights to UK benefits. 

According to the Home Office, some 23,000 people came to the UK in 2023 using that scheme, with Australia and New Zealand providing the most take-up.

Those advocating a deal with the EU argue that a repeat rejection by Starmer will only sour relationships with the EU, preventing any other negotiations. This is a disingenuous interpretation, as all the approaches are coming from Brussels, where EU leaders claim the scheme is “indispensable” for shaping a better relationship with the UK. Claims of mutual cultural enrichment are blithely bandied about without any substance regarding what would be different from current access through the existing visas.

The elephant in the room that explains why a UK youth mobility scheme is so important to the majority of EU member states is their high levels of youth unemployment which are generally very high in the EU compared to that of the UK.

In Spain, youth unemployment (15-24 years) is 25.8 per cent, in Sweden, Romania and Estonia it is 23 per cent, in Italy and Portugal it is just below 21 per cent — and in France just under 18 per cent. This compares with the UK, where it is 14.8 per cent and climbing — up from 12.1 per cent a year ago. Why would we want to open our doors to millions more of potential unemployed youths when it is already becoming harder for our own kids to find jobs?

The contrasting numbers are stark; there are some 49 million EU youths aged 20-29 who would be given the right to enter our jobs and education market and compete against only  8.5m Brits in the same age group. Reviving freedom of movement to EU youth has the potential to enlarge demand up to five times the current level. Why do we want to encourage competition for our own people at such a crucial, probably life-defining, time in their lives?

And it’s not just about the (usually) more buoyant British jobs market but the attraction of coming to the UK to learn English at the same time. That prospect makes Britain a far more enticing attraction for Spanish kids than going to, say, Germany even though its youth unemployment is reported at around 7 per cent. (It is the low figure for youth unemployment in Germany, the EU’s largest country, that pulls down the EU average significantly to 14.6 per cent.) The seductive appeal of learning English in the UK brings us to the problems that having open doors causes for British youth in accessing education.

A deluge of EU students taking up places at universities is not hypothetical scaremongering. In the last pre-Covid year of the EU’s Erasmus+ scheme in 2019, some 143,000 EU students took up places at UK universities while only 9,993 UK students attended EU universities. The Erasmus+ scheme was not popular with British students and was replaced by the UK’s Turing scheme which provides greater access to universities around the world, including the United States and Australasia. Concern has been raised that the £100m Turing Scheme could be cut back or closed to fund EU students accessing UK universities at the home student fee rate (£9,000) rather than the overseas student rate (ranging between £16,000-£59,000) — a key demand of the EU.

Similarly, if the attraction of having open borders for EU-UK youth is so Jasper and Jemima can go to the EU free of passport checks or without the sort of “papers-please” hassles they appear willing in greater numbers to endure when they go to the North America, South East Asia or Oceana then they will not even gain that momentary advantage. That’s because the EU-UK “border problem” of what supposedly happened before and after Brexit is a myth.

When it comes to freedom of movement there is all often an outbreak of memory loss, especially on social media where some rather ignorant or wilfully mendacious people post photographs of queues at passport control. They claim Brits have to wait while others with EU passports sail through — as if this is what we are missing out on. Wrong! I lived in France for eleven years and experienced the repeated queueing at Gatwick, Stansted, et al because the UK was not a signatory of the Schengen agreement and so when entering or leaving the EU all Brits had to show their passport at both ends of the journey.

EU nationals wishing to live, work or study in the UK should continue to seek permission like others under the UK’s post-Brexit immigration procedures

On my Toulouse-London commute I would come and go from the same passport control used by Moroccans and Algerians and those from other countries outside the EU – as well as citizens of Ireland, who were also outside Schengen.  Creating an EU-UK youth visa will not give access to a different or faster queue for either EU or UK citizens because the UK shall still be outside Schengen (meanwhile Romania and Bulgaria have now been admitted to Schengen, removing further internal border checks within the EU). 

With the proposed visa only being legitimate for UK holders in one EU member state it would also mean travel within the EU would be liable to require the UK passport to be shown where that is requested. There is nothing to be gained for the UK but the loss of security checks which, with today’s heightened terrorism risks, we should be looking to strengthen, not weaken.

An oft-ignored Brexit Benefit is that having disposed of freedom of movement the UK is now able to deny access to EU passport holders that have a criminal record resulting in a jail term of a year or more. Last year that amounted to 12,000 EU citizens who were denied entry and turned back, and I doubt they were mainly pensioners. This vital security check was impossible while we were in the EU.

Having strengthened that aspect of our security, why would we want to give 49 million EU citizens under thirty the right to saunter into the UK without a check to see if they have a criminal record? 

Until Labour sacrifices our national security to appease self-serving EU demands, EU nationals wishing to live, work or study in the UK should continue to seek permission like others under the UK’s post-Brexit immigration procedures — and long may that sensible screening continue.

The EU deal is a one-sided trojan horse for a full-fat freedom of movement deal that will make Britain’s borders more open than before 2016. Without another referendum that would be the ultimate betrayal of the country’s democratic vote and reason enough to vote anyone but Labour in the next general election.