Today, as Starmer welcomes the European Council president, António Costa, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, to Downing Street, he will be keen to frame it as a pragmatic reset in the UK’s relationship with the EU.
The government needs to stick to its promises to cut spending, slash immigration numbers and guarantee the UK’s sovereignty while also laying the groundwork tosecure a future deal with Britain’s most important trading partner.
Three prospective agreements have been flagged, on trade, defence, and a statement of geopolitical solidarity. And Starmer is said to have sought to rebuild trust with a promise to keep talks “in the room” without media leaks. But there has also been a view among senior EU diplomats that Britain is demanding concessions without offering anything in return. “There has been a period of hard negotiations,” said the defence secretary, John Healey. “We’re at the last hard yards of the last hard days.” The BBC reported that the final obstacles were resolved at about 10.30pm last night.
Why is improving trade relations with the EU so important?
While landing deals with India and the US is still a huge win for Starmer, the EU remains the UK’s largest and most important trading partner by some stretch. In 2024 it accounted for 41% of UK exports and 51% of all imported goods.
While Starmer has said that making a deal with the EU would be “incredibly beneficial”, others have gone further, saying that a reset in trade relations with the EU is crucial to the recovery of the UK economy. “The EU is the UK’s biggest and important trading partner, so it is important to get the reset right even if none of the individual elements will make a dramatic difference to economic growth, which is the government’s top priority,” says Jennifer.
Despite the government’s red lines ruling out a customs union or rejoining the single market, the EU has complained that it does not really know what the UK wants.
“Starmer came into power wanting a big reset with the EU, and I think this raised expectations from their side that they would make quite bold moves back towards Europe, but those expectations have so far been disappointed,” she says. “What the UK government is actually prepared to offer so far is pretty limited.”
How important is a security and defence partnership?
Jennifer says that the easiest – and one of the most important – deal under discussion is a new UK-EU security and defence partnership, likely to be the centrepiece of what is agreed.
“The feeling is that the security and defence pact will be the launching point for another set of negotiations, because with a war actively raging on the continent, everyone is singing from the same song sheet on the need for greater security cooperation,” she says.
The UK has said it hopes the proposal can extend to areas beyond military defence such as economic security, infrastructure, migration and transnational crime.
What about the veterinary deal?
One of the UK’s key aims has been to sign what it frames as a “veterinary” deal removing some of the border checks and inspections on the movement of food, drink, animals and plants into the EU.
However, this would mean that the UK would have to align with some EU regulations on food and drink standards – rules that are overseen by the European court of justice. One complexity is the demand from Brussels for “dynamic alignment” where the UK must adhere to evolving regulations without getting a say in their formation.
“Although voters seem relaxed about common standards, this would prove politically controversial, because hardline Eurosceptics in the Conservative party and Reform UK would accuse the government of giving up sovereignty,” says Jennifer.
“Another issue is that some EU countries are saying, why should we give you this when you’re not prepared to move on fishing, where we’re asking for long-term guaranteed access to British waters.” Where the negotiations landed to resolve this issue should become clear later today.
Why has fishing been such a big problem?
Fishing has always been a huge sticking point between the UK and the EU.
After Brexit, many British fishers felt betrayed when Boris Johnson’s government agreed to let EU fishing boats continue to access UK coastal waters until 2026.
With these arrangements set to expire, the EU wants them extended. The UK is understood to have offered continued access to fishing grounds for another four years to 2030.
The EU wants a longer-term arrangement and has been frustrated that the UK is demanding a veterinary deal but won’t reciprocate on fishing.
“Taking back control of ‘our’ fishing waters was sold as one of the benefits of Brexit, so it’s a sensitive issue for the government to cede ground on, especially with Reform UK looking over their shoulder,” says Jennifer. “On the other hand, the EU believe that without a longer-term deal, it would destroy European fishing industries.”
Jennifer says this is a real point of tension. “The UK has always been really keen to try and keep negotiations on issues like fishing and the veterinary deal separate,” says Jennifer. “But some member states are pushing for there to be a hard link between fisheries and a veterinary deal before an agreement on either is struck.”
What about youth mobility?
The EU has been very keen to strike an agreement on a “youth mobility scheme”, a reciprocal programme that would offer visas to 18 to 30-year-olds to come to the UK from the EU, and vice versa, for work, study and travel.
As Lisa O’Carroll set out in this explainer, member states are so keen to get this across the line that they have scaled back the original three-year proposal to one year, with a quota of between 50,000 to 70,000 young people going in either direction each year. The Sunday Times reported yesterday (£) that the new crackdown on legal migration announced last week was intended to give the minister for European affairs Nick Thomas-Symonds more leeway to negotiate.
Yet this has proved to be a politically thorny issue for the UK government, and the key details are not expected to be worked out until next year. “For a government who wants to save money and reduce immigration, this has been another block,” Jennifer says. “The idea of having an open-ended agreement with the EU where you could have thousands of young people coming to the UK every year, which they’d have to count in their immigration statistics, was just not flying with the Starmer government.”
What political pressures is the government under?
While Starmer has said he is not interested in rehashing the ghosts of Brexit past, his political opponents have other ideas – and whatever concessions or agreements have been made are likely to be weaponised against him.
On one side of the political spectrum, the Liberal Democrats have said that Starmer and his government are being too cautious and intractable, and businesses are desperate to exploit opportunities to work and trade with Europe.
Meanwhile, Reform UK has dismissed the summit as “the Great British sellout” and the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, has accused Starmer of preparing to “trade away our sovereignty behind closed doors”. The Mail on Sunday headlined its front page coverage “Brexit? What Brexit?” However triumphant the announcement today, that kind of coverage is likely to continue.
