Exclusive: EU’s new plans would give 64 MILLION EU people the right to live in UK

EU's new youth plan: 6.5 times as many EU 18-30s could come, versus UK 18-30s going to EU

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2025

In Brussels ‘the EU27’ briefly turns back into ‘the EU28’, with Sir Keir Starmer present

Will Sir Keir be discussing the EU's 'EU-UK Youth Mobility Scheme' while in Brussels today, for the first ‘EU28’ meeting since Brexit?

Today the Prime Minister is in Brussels for the UK’s first Summit with the EU27’s leaders where the UK will be present, since the UK formally left the bloc just over five years ago. Sir Keir will attend a meeting at Belgium’s Egmont Palace with the leaders of all 27 EU countries. For the duration of this gathering, the EU27 may therefore - in effect - look more like the EU28 again.

One of the items ‘in play’ between the EU and the UK is the EU’s proposed Youth Mobility Scheme, which would allow freedom of movement for all EU citizens aged 30 or under to enter the UK for any purpose. In this report, Part III of Facts4EU’s ‘Young Britain Special’, we look at what the EU wants first, before it will agree other subjects Sir Keir wants to discuss as part of his ‘Great EU Re-set’.

Why is Sir Keir in the EU’s capital at all?

© Egmont Palace, Brussels 2025 - click to enlarge

Initially the purpose of Sir Keir’s visit to Brussels' Egmont Palace today was to discuss defence. Given the precarious situation between Putin’s Russia and Ukraine, the EU wants the UK’s military capabilities. They have always been enthusiastic to have a formal EU-UK defence agreement as a bloc, whereas post-Brexit the UK government had been developing bilateral defence pacts with individual EU countries. It seems Sir Keir is also keen to discuss a central defence treaty as part of the PM’s desire to ‘reset’ the UK’s relationship with the EU.

In broad terms the EU Commission is always anxious to prevent its member countries from entering into bilateral international agreements, preferring to control everything centrally as “the EU”.

In addition to defence, the UK government wants to talk about illegal immigration into the UK from the EU. Unfortunately for Sir Keir, the EU will not discuss illegal migrants without agreeing a Youth Mobility Scheme and full access to the UK’s waters for its fishing fleets.

The proposed EU-UK Youth Mobility Scheme

In Part III of this ‘Young Britain Special’, Brexit Facts4EU.Org asks: “What is the EU’s proposed Youth Mobility Scheme and why is it dangerous?”

On 18 April last year (2024) Ursula von der Leyen’s EU Commission made a formal proposal to the EU Council to open negotiations with the UK on an agreement “to facilitate youth mobility”. This is now being discussed, as part of Sir Keir Starmer’s great ‘Re-set’ of the UK-EU relationship.

In its statement, the Commission said “such an agreement would make it easier for young EU and UK citizens to study, work and live in the UK and the EU respectively.”

'How many of the EU’s young unemployed do you want?'

The Commission’s proposed Youth Mobility Scheme is for all EU citizens aged 18-30, and this has even been extended to 35 years in some statements. 18-30 is not an age grouping contained in the population database of the EU’s official statistics agency.

Facts4EU.Org therefore interrogated the raw data to calculate the numbers for each age, using the last year for which numbers are available which is currently 2023.

Clearly only a proportion of these young people would take advantage of the mobility scheme, but what follows is the total ‘pool’.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

The potential total number who could come to the UK from the EU

  • Total EU citizens aged 18-30 years : 64,038,230
  • This is nearly as many people as the entire population of the United Kingdom : 68,265,200

[Source: EU Commission statistics agency | ONS.]

1. Far more could come from the EU to the UK than vice versa


© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2025 - click to enlarge

All these people will potentially be able to come to live in the UK,
if the Government agreed to the EU’s Youth Mobility Scheme.

2. The age breakdowns in the EU and UK


© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2025 - click to enlarge

What exactly does the Commission want?

Crucially, the Commission stated the Scheme’s purpose as follows :

“To enable young people to move without being tied to a purpose (i.e., to allow for studying, training or working), or quota-bound. For instance, under the envisaged agreement, both EU and UK citizens aged between 18 to 30 years would be able to stay for up to 4 years in the destination country.”

“Without being… quota-bound” is highly significant. Youth mobility agreements usually have quotas applied to them (see below) but the Commission wants there to be no such restrictions. This means they want an indefinite number of the EU’s 18-30-year-olds to be able to go to live in the UK for any reason, and to be able to stay for four years. If this were agreed by the Government, a large number of the EU’s youth could come to the UK and there would be nothing the Government could do about it.

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Increased costs to the UK taxpayer

As part of this Scheme, the Commission requires that visa fees be dropped. In the United Kingdom these are generally £490 for a student visa. For those coming to work, visas for a skilled worker cost from £719 to £1,639. Employers also pay the costs related to complying with the sponsorship system and this would be also be lost.

Another highly significant stipulation from the Commission is that UK universities and colleges would no longer be able to charge the higher, overseas-level tuition fees to EU students, which would then have a high cost implication for the educational establishments and therefore - inevitably - the British taxpayer. The level of tuition fees for international students for an undergraduate degree varies between £11,400 and £38,000 per year. The wording the Commission uses is that the Scheme “would also provide for equal treatment (i.e., non-discrimination) between EU and UK citizens in respect of higher education tuition fees.”

Finally, those coming to the UK on existing visas pay a healthcare surcharge: usually £776 per year for a student visa holder and £1,035 per year for a skilled worker visa holder. These would have to be removed.

From the (former Communist) EU Commissioner

“The Commission has today proposed to the Council to open negotiations with the United Kingdom on an agreement to facilitate youth mobility. Such an agreement would make it easier for young EU and UK citizens to study, work and live in the UK and the EU respectively.”

“The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union has hit young people in the EU and the UK who would like to study, work and live abroad particularly hard. Today, we take the first step towards an ambitious but realistic agreement between the EU and the UK that would fix this issue.”

- Maroš Šefčovič, Executive Vice-President for European Green Deal, Interinstitutional Relations and Foresight, 18 Apr 2024

The reality is of course that any such Youth Mobility Scheme would benefit the EU’s young people far more than UK’s. We will provide more proof of this in a further report, so watch this space.

Despite all the above, there is a bright, shining, Brexit light for the UK's young people!

The EU's proposed Youth Mobility Scheme might be a non-starter, but the UK's young people can in fact feel very optimistic about their futures and the global opportunities Brexit is bringing to them. In our next report we will present the exciting possibilities ahead, if the Government focuses on developing schemes already planned, which are directly designed to appeal to Britain's youth rather than to the youth of other countries.

Observations

“A rose by any other name would smell as rank”

It should be stressed that the Government has insisted it will not agree to the EU’s proposed Youth Mobility Scheme. That said, it still appears to be on the table.

In December (2024) the Minister for EU Relations Nick Thomas–Symonds appeared before the House of Lords European Affairs Committee, during which he said it was up to the EU to finalise any proposals it wanted to place on the table, and that the UK’s response would depend precisely on what was meant by youth mobility. This is clearly not a complete rejection.

For its part, the EU has been busy on one of its standard strategies when it doesn’t immediately get its way: rebranding in an effort to disguise, or ‘concealing to appeal’. They have now started trying alternative nomenclatures, such as a “youth experience scheme” and a “cultural enrichment programme”. Our view is the same as when the EU adopted an identical strategy after the proposed EU Constitution began to be rejected by voters in national referenda, notably in France and Ireland. The EU Commission simply renamed it “the Lisbon Treaty” and hey presto, this went into law.

The UK already has reciprocal youth mobility agreements with 10 countries and 3 minor territories (e.g. Andorra). These are time limited and provide for a two-year visa allowing work or study in the UK. They are also subject to strict quotas, and ballots have been applied for applications from countries such as India which are seriously oversubscribed.

So, is this really a form of ‘Freedom of Movement’?

Finally, every europhile UK organisation – as well as the EU itself - has been at pains to stress that any EU Youth Mobility Scheme with the UK is not the same as Freedom of Movement. Unfortunately we must be sceptical.

If millions can enter the UK for any reason they choose and stay for four years, (during which time they could apply for other visas), then we consider this to be Freedom of Movement to all intents and purposes. It doesn’t matter if there are some conditions, these will only prevent a small number.

We remind readers that Remainers told us all that ‘only’ three million citizens came to live in the UK during our EU membership. In reality more than six million had done so. We know this because this is how many Settlement applications the Home Office has now approved under the ‘EU Settlement Scheme’. The Home Office has in fact over nine million applications in all.

Whilst any Youth Mobility Scheme would differ from the EU’s “greatest achievement”, (Free Movement), if the Government is allowed to pursue any discussions about this we strongly suspect it will represent one further step down the deliberately-obscured road back towards EU membership.

The last thing the country needs is a way for the EU to reintroduce mass immigration of its citizens into the UK. The dangers inherent in any such scheme are too great and this idea must be rejected out of hand.

Please, please help us to carry on our vital work in defence of independence, sovereignty, democracy and freedom by donating today. Thank you.

[ Sources: EU Commission | Home Office | Hansard | House of Lords European Affairs Committee | Hoc Libraray ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Mon 03 Feb 2025

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