British under-30s set to work freely across EU again

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Andy Burnham has suggested it is ‘possible’ Labour’s next election manifesto could include an in-out referendum or even a pledge to rejoin the European Union (PA Archive) PA Archive

The prime minister has promised to use the UK-EU summit in Brussels next month to push for a Brexit reset (Getty) Getty

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British under-30s look set to regain the right to work freely across the EU, as London and Brussels move to complete the youth mobility scheme that would mark the first substantial restoration of movement since Brexit. According to The Independent, the UK side is now willing to accept a Brussels-brokered agreement ensuring young Britons can work in any job in participating member states — a reversal from earlier drafts in which they would have faced tighter restrictions than the Europeans coming the other way. The mechanics matter. Individual EU member states retain the final say over who receives work visas on their territory, so Brussels has been negotiating separately with national capitals to bind them into a common scheme. The i Paper reports that the UK has signalled acceptance of that arrangement, removing the main asymmetry that had stalled the Youth Experience Scheme talks. Two numbers still divide the negotiating tables. London wants the scheme capped below 50,000 entrants a year; the EU has tabled 150,000 visas. Tuition fees remain the other thorn — member states want their young people to qualify for home fee status at British universities, while Westminster resists, under pressure from universities that price foreign students as a revenue line. The political backdrop has shifted. Andy Burnham, pressing for a closer relationship with the EU ahead of next month's UK-EU summit in Brussels, has warned that "sticking with the status quo is not good enough" and suggested Labour's next manifesto could even include an in-out referendum or a pledge to rejoin. A survey by European Movement UK and Obsurvant, seen by The Independent, found nearly three-quarters of Labour voters want reaccession talks in the next manifesto, and Britons would vote 57 to 30 per cent to rejoin in a second referendum. The restoration arrives through a narrow gate. The points-based visa system that replaced free movement after Brexit channelled four of five new British jobs into non-European migrants under rules where employers, not voters, certify the labour shortage. Now mobility returns not as a principle but as a quota — a bargaining chip between a British government short of workers and a continent short of young ones. Both sides, in other words, have rediscovered the same commodity they spent a decade dismantling, and are now haggling over whether it comes in units of 50,000 or 150,000.