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Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said it is time for an “honest discussion” about freedom of movement with the European Union, in his clearest comments yet on one of the biggest questions in the UK’s future relationship with Europe.

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Joe Meighan, Public Affairs Manager at European Movement UK, reflects on the developments we have seen in Westminster this week on the view of the government on UK-EU relations. 

Westminster was like a bus stop on Monday. You wait ages for a discussion on Europe and then two debates come along at once. First, Andy Burnham opened the question of Britain’s European future in the Commons. Later, MPs debated EU membership in Westminster Hall.  

The Prime Minister had already confirmed two things in recent weeks. Labour’s manifesto red lines on the UK-EU relationship will remain in place in this parliament. But, for the longer term, he will consider every option, including membership.  

The timing of Burnham’s parliamentary intervention reaffirming those twin commitments was partly a political calculation. He knew the Westminster Hall debate was coming. He knew Labour MPs would use it to make pro-European points. He wanted to get ahead of that discussion and stay in control of the narrative.   

There is also, however, an economic background. With a difficult Budget approaching on 28 October, Europe is looming ever larger in internal government discussions about how to deliver prosperity. A government serious about improving living standards must examine the barriers that make trading with our neighbours more difficult. Our relationship with the EU is integral to the discussion about how we pay for better public services and create opportunities across the country. 

Perhaps a copy of our Heart of Europe 2036 paper on how we can be back in the EU within a decade has found its way into the Prime Minister’s red box? We would be delighted to provide another, in case the first was buried beneath Treasury submissions. 

The Westminster Hall debate showed why that conversation – the ‘how’, not just the ‘why’ or the ‘when’ of joining the EU - matters.  

In Westminster Hall, Stella Creasy MP, Chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, challenged the idea that the UK can just decide to join and the rest will follow. Europe has its own priorities. We need to understand them and approach our partners with humility. 

Creasy also renewed her call for a parliamentary committee to scrutinise European affairs, something that European Movement UK wants in this parliament. MPs need a permanent forum to examine agreements, question ministers and hear evidence from those affected, helping the public understand the choices available. Democratic legitimacy for any future deal is imperative.  

Ben Coleman MP offered a moving account of seeing Britain contribute to Europe, recalling his time in divided Berlin and working in Brussels. “I want us to be that again, and this time for keeps.” That last thought is crucial, as our case must be strong enough to endure a change of government. 

Summit in the water

The first test of the government’s more pro-European turn will be the EU-UK summit in Brussels on 20 November. It will focus on delivering pledges made at the first summit in May 2025, on easing food and agricultural trade, linking emissions trading systems, closer energy cooperation and a youth experience scheme. Those measures are modest in the context of a debate about membership. But they will bring tangible benefits and will help rebuild confidence around the negotiating table, undermined by the delays and disagreements that have marred the period since that earlier summit. 

There is a lesson here for those of us who want to get the UK back in the EU as soon as possible. Membership negotiations will not proceed without hitches. Much of the work will be technical, given that the UK remains aligned with much EU law. But there will also be procedural hold-ups and political setbacks.  

The UK must embark on this journey with our eyes open. We should not mistake a difficult negotiation for an impossible one. Our European partners will have legitimate interests to defend and political pressures of their own. UK representatives will need to defend our corner on occasion. But they must demonstrate that they understand the responsibilities of membership and that we intend to stay.  

This is why our Heart of Europe 2036 ambition matters. We want to see the next election fought and won on manifesto commitments to seek the UK’s accession to the EU. If the election is in 2029, an application to join the EU could follow in 2030. Negotiations and ratification of UK accession could be completed by 2036. The timetable depends on public consent, political commitment and agreement with our European partners.  With a fair wind, we might get there earlier. But, even if it takes a little longer, we should not change course.                                  

Our recent polling with Obsurvant suggests there is appetite. 54.5% of respondents supported working towards EU membership with the aim of joining by 2036, with 21.8% opposed. Those figures include undecided respondents.  

These findings and those of other polls give politicians permission to be more ambitious, and campaigners a responsibility to persuade. Supporting a ten-year ambition does not mean someone has resolved every concern about the eventual agreement. Trust will depend on clear and honest explanations. 

One finding should guide the tone of the whole conversation: 59.1% wanted Britain to focus mainly on the relationship with the EU best for the country’s future. We should not re-run the arguments of 2016. We must convince voters of what Britain could achieve in the Europe of the 2030s and beyond. 

That means that showing how membership could help businesses expand, open opportunities for young people and support investment in communities worried about their future. We should also ask what Britain can contribute to Europe’s security and prosperity. A confident country should want to help shape the decisions affecting its continent. 

Monday’s debates show that the tide is turning, the door to Europe is now opening in earnest. The Prime Minister is showing leadership, and the pro-European majority in Parliament is finally speaking out with confidence and conviction.  

What is needed now is political will and hard work. The European Movement will play our part in each of these. 

European Movement UK has launched Heart of Europe 2036, a major new national campaign setting out an ambitious vision for the United Kingdom to join the European Union within the next ten years.

The campaign calls for a stronger economy, more opportunities for young people, greater security and a UK that once again helps shape the decisions affecting Europe's future.

The campaign arrives on a day where joining the EU is due to be debated in Westminster, at 4.30pm, and days after Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the Labour Conference that all "options" are on the table when it comes to the UK's relationship with the rest of Europe.

Heart of Europe was launched with a campaign video, posted last night, including the likes of Caroline Lucas, Michael Heseltine, Neil Kinnock and Miriam Margolyes. Watch the video here:

Backed by a new report, the campaign sets out how EU membership could benefit people across the UK – from businesses trading freely with Europe to young people studying, working and building careers across the continent.

New polling commissioned by European Movement UK shows that 54.5% of the public support working towards EU membership by 2036, while 53% would support a political party committed to beginning the process of joining the EU.

The campaign makes clear that 2036 is a target, not a deadline, recognising that achieving membership will require sustained public support, political leadership and constructive relationships with European neighbours.

As a first step, European Movement UK is calling on every political party to commit in its next general election manifesto to beginning the journey towards EU membership.

Heart of Europe 2036 will bring together the existing campaigns on trade, youth opportunities, security, environmental protection and cultural exchange under one shared ambition: putting the UK back at the heart of Europe by 2036, if not sooner.

The public is now being invited to add their names in support of the ambition and help build a movement for the UK's future in Europe.

Read more about Heart of Europe 2036 and add your name.

New polling by European Movement UK shows nearly three-quarters of Labour voters want to see talks on joining the European Union in the party's next election manifesto.

72% of Labour voters said they would support a commitment to beginning the process to seek membership of the EU - versus just 12% that said no.

• The polling, in partnership with Observant, can be found here.

• It comes as European Movement UK launches the campaign for the UK to join the European Union within the next ten years.

• A new feasibility study, detailing how the UK could become a full member by 2036, can be read here.

The campaign, Heart of Europe, launches tomorrow, on Monday 12th October, the day MPs will hold a debate on the UK's future relationship with Europe. We've mobilised more than 26,000 members of the public to write to their MPs ahead of the debate - and every MP in the UK has been contacted. 

Sir Nick Harvey, CEO of European Movement UK, said:

"The national mood is changing. The evidence of the last ten years, since the UK left the EU, has shown to the British public that they were misled. Placing huge barriers between ourselves and our largest trading market has cost every single one of us.

"Estimates show between 6% and 8% has been wiped off our economy during a decade of national agony. That is billions that could have been used for public services. It is businesses throwing their hands up and ceasing to trade with Europe. 

“It is red-tape and restrictions, dwindling global influence and the dawning knowledge that the promised benefits of leaving the EU have not materialised, and never will."

Emma Knaggs, Deputy CEO, European Movement UK, added:

"We have quite simply lost an entire decade. 2036 will be a generation since the vote to leave. For the sake of the next generation, their ability to live, work and study abroad, the economic situation they will face in adulthood, and their sense of national pride, we have drawn a line in the sand. That line is 2036. 

“Ten years that we can spend healing the self-harm that leaving the EU has wreaked on our country. And pushing towards a joint goal, to put the UK back at the heart of Europe."

Dr Mike Galsworthy, Chair, European Movement UK, said the following:

“It feels like we have stopped digging in the Brexit hole and are now starting to clamber out of it into the welcoming sunshine. What must lead now is not the temptations to look back, but the determination to look forward at the abundant opportunities in a new landscape where we are actively wanted as a team player.

"Europe is always our family and our nearest partners. With the Commonwealth and Europe starting to come together in new partnership, the UK must put itself at the heart of all of that, for our values, our economy, our power, our standards, our security, our businesses and our citizens. Only full EU membership will do. 

“We can be fully back in by 2036, so let us crack on and engage a whole-society push, with everyone included, to do just that.”   

European Movement UK has launched a new documentary exploring Iceland’s recent referendum on its future relationship with Europe.

Iceland’s Place In Europe was filmed in Reykjavík and beyond during the week Icelanders went to the polls to decide whether to reopen negotiations on joining the European Union.

Watch the documentary here:

By 52.8% to 47.2%, Icelanders voted against reopening negotiations, with more than 225,000 people taking part.

The documentary hears from voices on all sides of this national conversation, exploring the arguments that shaped the campaign and what Iceland’s experience can teach pro-European campaigners in the UK.

The result was not what Iceland’s pro-European campaigners had hoped for. But the referendum showed that, as the world changes, countries can reopen conversations about Europe and look again at the future they want to build.

Watch Iceland’s Place In Europe now.

On Sunday, the results of the Icelandic referendum on reopening EU membership negotiations were announced. Some 225,000 voters took to the polls, representing a turnout of 82.5%, to determine whether the mid-Atlantic nation would resume the accession talks that had been suspended in 2013.

The people of Iceland decided, by a narrow margin of 52.8% to 47.2% to reject the proposal, meaning that membership negotiations will remain suspended and will not be reopened.

The response to the result around Europe was muted. At the request of Reykjavík, the EU remained silent during the campaign leading up to the vote and continued to keep a low profile in response to the results. There was no public statement from Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on the issue, while European Council President António Costa said only that “the EU fully respects the democratic choice of the Icelandic people… Iceland remains one of the EU’s closest and most trusted partners.”

Eurosceptics across the continent have seized the opportunity to claim that the result is a damning indictment of the European Union which proves some fundamental failings of the EU. It’s a predictable response. It’s also a lazy one.

A team from European Movement UK were on the ground in Iceland making a short film about the referendum – which will be released soon – and found that many No voters argued passionately for rejecting the reopening of negotiations while simultaneously affirming their support for Iceland continuing to work closely with Europe.

From being on-the-ground during the vote and listening to Icelanders, the results of Iceland's referendum tell us far more about the domestic situation of the island nation, and the relationship between Reykjavík and Iceland's rural regions, than they do about people's views on Europe.

Motivations for voting No

Despite the misinformation and fear-mongering during the campaign on the cost of EU membership, the loss of sovereignty, and the undermining of Iceland’s proud and deeply historical culture, the concerns of many No voters were far less verbose.

Fisheries were central to the argument for many. The industry employs 4% of the nation’s workforce and accounts for approximately 8% of the national GDP, giving it similar weight to the finance and insurance industry here in the UK. Many No voters expressed concern that, under the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, Iceland would find its quotas reduced and its control over this central industry restricted by the EU.

Agriculture and farming produced similar concerns. Davíð Clausen Pétursson, a third-generation farmer, told The Guardian that reopening negotiations on EU membership would bring about years of uncertainty and instability to his industry, which has been steadily growing stronger in recent years – a departure from the picture in much of the rest of Europe.

But, like many No voters, Davíð made clear that his vote was not a rejection of the EU, saying “I’m not against anything in the EU at all. I am half Danish, my mother is Danish and we of course buy a lot from Europe.”

This was a more common position than some headlines would have you believe.

In the port town of Akranes, shortly after the results were announced, the team spoke with Gísli who, despite having voted No, told them firmly that “Icelanders are Europeans. [There is] no other way than strengthening the ties with our neighbour nations. On the whole, we are Europeans and we want to have a good cooperation with European nations and the public in Europe.”

Many Icelanders rejected Reykjavík, not Europe

Other interviewees were focused on even more local issues, with wider foreign policy seeming to play little part in their decision-making for the referendum. Familiar concerns were repeatedly raised about the government’s record on infrastructure, jobs, and inflation.

For many, especially in towns and rural areas, the EU was a distant issue by comparison, and they expressed frustration at Reykjavík’s attention having been drawn away from the grassroots issues that impact ordinary Icelanders day-to-day.

For many of these people, the arguments of the Yes campaign were not so much disagreeable as they were irrelevant. The promise of adopting the euro many years into the future, which likely would help ease Iceland’s runaway inflation and proved a popular talking point for young voters, did not sufficiently make up for the lack of action in the present. Arguments about national security, especially in light of Donald Trump’s imperialist ambitions for neighbouring Greenland, paled in comparison to communities’ desperate need for tunnels and roads so their children can reliably get to school.

For many, daily life decided the referendum. Not geopolitics.

There were, of course, less nuanced arguments made during the debate, with inaccurate estimates, exaggerated claims, and emotional propaganda being leveraged throughout the campaign. Many of the No voters in Reykjavík, the urban heartland of the Yes campaign, also told our team that they wanted Iceland to maintain ‘control’ and not cede any powers to the EU.

But these grand statements and sweeping claims were not what decided the result.

"Icelanders are Europeans."

Iceland is in both the European Economic Area and in the Schengen Agreement. It is a nation of around 400,000 people that is historically, culturally, and economically intertwined with the EU in a thousand different ways. And the result of this referendum changes none of that.

As the EU prepares to embark on its biggest enlargement effort for decades, a wealthy country like Iceland agreeing to join the list of active candidate countries would have cemented the bloc as an attractive prospect for all nations, not just those in need of the economic and democratic stability it can provide.

But the referendum should not be taken as a rejection of Europe or of the EU, either. Iceland is in the EU single market. It has freedom of movement and, like Gísli told our team, “Icelanders are Europeans”. The results last weekend present no evidence for that changing.

The lesson for the UK's European future

If pro-EU campaigners are to take anything from this result, it should be to look locally. Whilst high-level arguments of geopolitics, ideological arguments, and international security might be convincing to some, these issues have little cut-through when set against the immediate concerns facing people and their communities.

Here in the UK, we have to learn that too. When we come to a point where the UK is able to join the EU, it will have to be with an overwhelming majority of the country on board, across every city, town, village, and hamlet. It will have to be a movement built on stable domestic politics and arguments that appeal to the majority. Building that majority is the task of the years ahead.

This means making the case for a European future through the things that matter in people's everyday lives: good jobs and thriving local businesses; opportunities for young people to study, travel and work across Europe; stronger communities; greater security; and the freedom to live, work and build a life across our continent.

It also means listening. A successful movement cannot simply tell people why Europe matters. It has to understand what matters to them and demonstrate how a closer relationship with our European neighbours can help deliver it.

Icelanders have had a relatively respectful, national conversation about their relationship with Europe. Yes, the No campaign won but a lot of Icelanders didn’t vote against the EU on Sunday – they voted against Reykjavík. Other voters believe this conversation will continue. 

When the time comes for the UK to have this conversation, we need to make sure that voters feel confident voting for the UK to join the EU, rather than voting against an out-of-touch government in London.

Joining the EU cannot be about going back to the UK of 2016. It has to be about building the UK we want to see in 2036.

By Joe Meighan - 

Andy Burnham’s statement that the UK needs to be “bolder” in its relationship with the EU is welcome. It is also a good way to frame the next UK–EU summit.

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Today, European Movement UK delivered a petition signed by more than 27,000 people directly to Downing Street, calling on the new Prime Minister to set out a more ambitious future for the UK in Europe.

The petition sets out five clear asks for the Prime Minister:

• Drop the red lines on Europe
• Publish, by the end of 2026, a strategy for cementing the UK’s place in Europe
• Make the UK Europe’s closest security partner
• Launch a national conversation about our European future
• Put a well-considered route to EU membership in Labour’s next manifesto.

The hand-in marks the culmination of a campaign that has seen more than 27,000 people add their names in support of a bolder approach to the UK’s relationship with Europe. But delivering the petition is only the beginning.

For our security, our opportunities and our quality of life, the UK cannot afford to settle for the approach of previous governments. The new Prime Minister now has an opportunity to lead the country towards a new European future, and European Movement UK will continue pushing the government to seize it.

Emma Knaggs, Deputy CEO of European Movement UK, said:

“More than 27,000 people have sent a clear message to the new Prime Minister: Labour votes, and the public at large, wants greater ambition about the UK’s future in Europe.

“Today we made sure that message reached Downing Street. Now we need the Prime Minister to act on it.

“This is about our security, our opportunities and our quality of life. The UK has an opportunity to build a stronger European future, and our movement will keep pushing until that opportunity is seized.”

More details on Our Five Asks for Andy are here.