Keir
Starmer’s summit with European Commission chief delayed
Sources fear
meeting with Ursula von der Leyen postponed amid Labour doubts about
reinstating EU student exchange schemes
Lisa
O'Carroll Brexit correspondent
Sun 8 Sep
2024 13.55 BST
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.”
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