Is youth mobility between the UK and EU finally on the agenda?
The EU is proposing negotiations with the UK for a reciprocal youth mobility deal. What might be the sticking points?
The EU Commission is seeking an internal mandate to begin negotiations with the UK about a reciprocal deal to “facilitate youth mobility”. The basic outline of the proposal is that those aged 18 to 30 would be eligible for a four year general visa which would allow studying, training, working or travelling. Study fees would be home student fees rather than far higher international student fees, as applied prior to Brexit. The EU is proposing lower fees than for nationals of other countries. The visa would not allow access to the whole EU, only to a specific country.
The proposal comes with impeccable timing. A couple of articles caught my eye recently which had made me wonder about why the UK wasn’t more interested in a youth mobility deal with the EU. The first was on the dearth of Italian waiters. The other was on the drought in au pairs. Tiny violin issues in many ways. But also symptomatic of the problems with youth mobility between the EU and UK. Indeed, I suggested that as a solution just a few days ago…
Last year the UK government was reported to be investigating youth mobility deals with individual EU countries including France, Germany, Spain and non-EU Switzerland. The suspicion is that this bilateral approach is intended to prevent young workers from eastern Europe coming to the UK. The EU seems to be sticking together on this, unsurprisingly. It’s not hard to imagine that the Polish government would be pretty pissed off if the French government reached a separate deal; the French have more to gain through their relationship with Poland within the EU than with the UK outside the EU.
You can read the details of the EU proposal here from where you can click through to the Q&A and other sub-pages. Many thanks to Steve Peers for flagging this up in an excellent thread on Twitter.
Existing UK youth mobility scheme
The UK already has youth mobility deals with Andorra, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Japan, Monaco, New Zealand, San Marino, South Korea, Taiwan and Uruguay. This is known as the Youth Mobility Scheme. Back in the day, it was called the working holiday-maker visa and existed only for nationals of Commonwealth countries.
The arrangements vary between the different countries. For some the eligibility is ages 18 to 35 and for others 18 to 30. Some nationalities hit their allotted country quota and some do not. The visa is always a two year one, although it can be extended to three years for nationals of some countries (Australia, Canada or New Zealand).* The visa enables unsponsored work of any kind or other activities including self-employment and study. Applicants have to be self-supporting and cannot draw on public funds within the UK.
I’ve had a dig around in the immigration stats and in 2023 the numbers applying from different countries are, along with their quota:
Andorra: 0 (100 places available)
Australia: 10,108 (45,000 places available)
Canada: 2,792 (8,000 places available)
Hong Kong: 195 (1,000 places available)
Iceland: 26 (1,000 places available)
India: 2,232 (3,000 places available)
Japan: 898 (6,000 places available)
Monaco: 1 (1,000 places available)
New Zealand: 5,459 (8,500 places available)
San Marino: 1 (1,000 places available)
South Korea: 747 (5,000 places available)
Taiwan: 731 (1,000 places available)
Uruguay: 0 (500 places available)
TOTAL: 23,359
The vast majority of these applications were granted: a total of 22,750 in 2023 (although not all those decisions will relate to applications made that year).
I’m not going to try and unearth the stats for all of these countries to try and find out how many Brits reciprocate. But press reports suggest that over 35,000 Brits headed to Australia. Arguably rather embarrassingly, we’re rather keener on going there than they are about coming here.
The overt reason for the difference in treatment between nationals of different countries is that the terms of the visa have been negotiated as part of different trade deals. Even before that, the terms of the visa were said by the British government to be fixed on a reciprocal basis. Presumably this is why there is no youth mobility arrangement with the US, for example: they don’t want one and won’t reciprocate.
The UK government has, as far as I know, made no proposals of its own for a youth mobility arrangement with the EU. There were reports a while back that proposals had been made to individual EU countries but that the UK was unwilling it countenance an EU-wide deal.
What happens next?
This is just an internal proposal within the EU at the moment, although it seems very likely that it will form the basis for a future proposal to the UK.
The UK does not of course have to agree to any such proposal. The whole thing could be rejected. Or specific aspects could be negotiated on.
For example, the EU is proposing a quota-free system. There are a lot more young people in the EU (total population 450 million) than in the UK (total population 67 million) and all of the UK’s youth mobility schemes currently have a quota attached to them, albeit one that has not been reached in recent years. So the UK might understandably look to agree a quota of some kind. How this would work at the EU end of things is not clear; there might be issues about how it is divided between the various member states. Or a ballot could be employed, as is currently the case for nationals of Hong Kong, India and Taiwan.**
The EU’s proposal on students benefiting from home student fees might raise some eyebrows. I’m not sure what cash-strapped UK universities would think of that. Would they rather have more EU students paying home fees or far, far fewer EU students paying international fees? I’m pretty sure it would be the latter if home student fee levels stay as they are, because they are currently loss-making, as I understand it. If home student fees increase under the next government, the equation might change.
The four year duration the EU is proposing might also be the subject of negotiation. The normal period for previous deals has been two years, but this is now extendable to three years for nationals of Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
The asks might not all be one way. The EU proposal is only for access to a single EU country with onward movement by a British young person subject to the normal Schengen rules of 90 days at a time:
The envisaged agreement would not grant intra-EU mobility rights. The admission of a UK national by a Member State under the envisaged agreement would only be valid for that Member State. Travelling for up to 90 days within the rest of the EU would be subject to the conditions in the Schengen acquis or national legislation.
That would probably make the visa of far less interest to young Brits than one enabling access to the whole block. It might well prove to be a sticking point for the UK.
The impact of a youth mobility deal with the EU could be considerable here in the UK. Depending on the numbers, it might have a significant impact on the labour market. Employers would be delighted, presumably, because a deal would enable the entry of a pool of young workers willing to work for relatively low wages in jobs in which there is currently a shortage of UK workers. Unemployment figures are historically very low in the UK at the moment, standing at just over 4% of people.
It’s likely there will be a change of government later this year. On the face of it, one might think the EU’s proposal is more likely to find favour with Labour than the Conservatives. After all, the Conservatives are all about reducing net migration.
But Labour’s initial reaction has hardly been positive. The FT has an excellent article looking at the issue. Ominously, a Labour official said youth mobility is “synonymous with freedom of movement”. A quota would, one would have thought, knock that reasoning on the head.
The problem of overstaying
One thing that policy makers really should consider but probably won’t is what happens to those young people who overstay at the end of their visa. This is bound to happen, sometimes accidentally and sometimes deliberately. I can’t remember seeing any research or statistics on what percentage of people overstay on different visas. Once upon a time it was thought, rightly or wrongly, that Australians on working holiday-maker visas were the UK’s number 1 immigration offender group. And vice versa.
Overstaying might be more of an issue with a temporary work permit like this which cannot be extended beyond a certain point. Once you have a job, a home and relationships, you might become understandably reluctant to leave. As is always the case with migration, some people will happily go home and some people won’t, basically.
Enforcing removal involves detention, removal and a re-entry ban. It means unhappy employers, who lose their trained or experienced workers. That’s all pretty harsh. Allowing people to switch into a full work permit or at least qualify for re-entry might reduce the risks of overstaying a bit as well as avoiding the enforcement issues that would otherwise arise.
The problem with harsh rules which try to break normal human behaviours is that they don’t actually break those behaviours. Humans carry on doing human things. The authorities who made those rules then need to deal with the consequences. One way forward is to having more realistic rules in the first place.
* With thanks to Tommy Brett-Young for pointing out the maximum time for nationals of Australia, Canada or New Zealand is actually three years not four.
** And with thanks to Steve Peers to raising the issue of how the allocation of a quota could prove problematic for the EU.