UK ready to explore EU tuition fee cut as part of Brexit reset
Tuition fees for students from EU countries at British universities could be lowered, but only as a result of a “very big” offer from Brussels that was part of a wider “reset” of post-Brexit ties, UK officials have said.
The number of young people from the EU studying in the UK dropped sharply after Brexit and a sharp rise in tuition fees, and Brussels is pushing to cut those costs in talks with London over a new youth mobility scheme.
Britain has previously rejected as “a non-starter” the idea of EU students paying “home fees” to attend its universities. But as chancellor Rachel Reeves pushes to deepen bilateral ties, UK officials said the issue could yet be discussed if Brussels was prepared to make a big offer elsewhere.
“It would be expensive and it was a red line from the summit last year,” said one official. “If we were to move on it, we would need something very big in return.” The Department for Education is working on calculating how much any concession on fees would cost.
In talks with the EU, Britain is insisting that the number of young people who can come to live, study and work in the UK under a youth mobility scheme must be capped, an idea being resisted by some EU member states. “It would have to be in the tens of thousands,” said one UK official.
UK officials briefed on the negotiations said that if Britain allowed EU students to have discounted fees at its universities, it would require Brussels not just to accept a cap on numbers but also to make big concessions elsewhere.
Reeves will on Tuesday set out British aspirations to gain closer access to the bloc’s single market on a sector-by-sector basis by aligning with EU rules, in a big speech intended to warm relations.
People briefed on the chancellor’s Mais lecture in the City of London said she would not set out which sectors she had in mind but that the speech represented a “scoping exercise” to try to open discussions with the EU about a much more ambitious reset of trading relations.
“The EU is searching globally for trusted partners and would welcome a clearer political signal from the UK,” said Mujtaba Rahman of consultancy Eurasia Group. “Critics will call Reeves’ approach ‘cherry-picking’, but the EU no longer opposes that outright. The real question now is how much cherry-picking it is willing to accept.”
Any movement by Britain on tuition fees could be linked to much closer UK integration into the EU economy, which Reeves will say must be a central feature of the government’s strategy to boost sluggish growth.
Britain is also seeking access to a new EU “Made in Europe” scheme for public procurement and subsidies. Carmakers based in Britain are particularly worried about its impact and more talks are scheduled in Brussels this week.
About 28,400 EU students enrolled on a new university course in the UK in the 2023-24 academic year, according to the Migration Observatory at Oxford university. The figure was 57 per cent lower than in 2020-21, the last year when free movement rules applied to students from the bloc.
Previously capped at a uniform £9,250 a year, undergraduate tuition fees for EU students increased to between £11,400 and £32,000 a year in 2021-22. European officials say EU students are being priced out of a sought-after British university education.
At the first EU-UK summit last May, the two sides agreed to make it easier for young people to move between the bloc and the UK. London and Brussels are also negotiating deals to remove border checks on animal and plant products and to re-link their carbon-pricing schemes.
The UK government said in a statement that it would not give a running commentary on talks. “Any final 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,” it said.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said negotiations were continuing and would be concluded by the time of the next summit in the summer. It declined to comment on the substance of the negotiations.
Comments