Keir Starmer’s anticipated summit with the president of the European Commission has been postponed amid EU disappointment at the UK government’s continuing caution about reinstating programmes such as the youth mobility and Erasmus university exchange schemes.
The prime minister was expected to meet Ursula von der Leyen in the first or second week of September, but sources have said a meeting may now not happen until the end of October at the earliest.
EU diplomats said there is “dismay” in some quarters that the UK government was not more positive about the youth and student schemes, saying that showing caution about such low-hanging fruit calls into question hopes for a wider reset of the UK’s relationship with the EU.
Brussels sources said they were wondering if Starmer was acting out of an abundance of caution, fearing that pro-Brexit opponents would accuse him of trying to reverse Brexit if he agreed too eagerly to reinstate the programmes.
Others said the EU was putting down its own red lines by briefing reporters that a deal on easing travel for musicians and artists was unlikely.
Starmer’s one-to-one meeting with von der Leyen was originally planned for 25 July, but a schedule clash ruled that out and both sides said they would try again for late August or early September.
It is now expected that the new programme of work on an EU reset will not start in earnest until the spring, with a potential for an EU-UK summit early next year to get the ball rolling.
EU sources said they are not concerned about the delay as von der Leyen is focused on getting her new board of management, the EU commissioners, in place.
On Wednesday morning she will name her new commissioners but their appointments must then be ratified by the European parliament, which could take a more than a month.
The UK’s return to the Erasmus programme would not be without its difficulties as it would possibly involve scrapping its replacement, the Turing scheme.
One senior academic said the Turing scheme had the advantage of being global, but its downfall is that it is a one-way programme – it allows UK students to attend an EU university but the British institution has fund their place.
If institutions cannot persuade the recipient university to send a student the other way, the UK institution is left with a financial deficit, unlike with Erasmus, where the system was already set up for exchanges.
Politicians in the EU and the UK have spoken of their desire to get a scheme up and running that will allow young people to experience other countries.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, recently said “The contacts between our societies, between Germans and people in the UK, have declined massively after Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic. We want to change that; if you know each other very well you understand each other better.”
