All blogs

When we left the EU, the UK also left the Erasmus+ Programme, robbing future generations of young people in the UK of the chance to experience education, training and sport opportunities across Europe. 

According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which has published the data for the first full post-Brexit year, the number of EU students enrolling in British universities has more than halved since Brexit – with sharp declines in scholars from Italy, Germany and France, figures reveal. 

Brexit is seen as the primary deterrent, with home fees and student finance no longer available to EU students who do not already live in the UK with settled or pre-settled status. 

With this in mind, on Thursday 9th February 2023, the Young European Movement (YEM) UK welcomed participants from across the UK to London for its 2023 Erasmus+ Academy, a political bootcamp designed to connect like-minded young pro-Europeans, provide them with a toolkit of skills for how to run an effective political campaign on re-joining the Erasmus+ programme.  

This two-day programme of events kick-started with a Networking Reception in Europe House on the Future of UK-EU Relations in Education, where over sixty attendees heard unique insight from several senior commentators on how the relationship can be strengthened.  

The German Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Miguel Berger, laid down a marker at the offset by sharing his disappointment over the UK’s decision to terminate its Erasmus+ membership, adding that it was his government’s desire for this decision to be reversed.  

Following on from Ambassador Berger’s assessment, Labour MP for Preston, Sir Mark Hendrick, took to the stage and gave a devasting analysis of the Government’s track record on Brexit and the damage that it has done to the economy. He shared Labour’s vision of a closer relationship with Europe on key issues, including agreements on security and defence, Horizon+ membership as well as leaving the door open on Erasmus+. 

We then heard from another former MEP and Liberal Democrat Peer, Baroness Sarah Ludford, who brought down the house with a witty and frank critique of how this government has dealt with the fallout from leaving the EU. In looking to shape a future where London and Brussels could engage in a meaningful and advantageous manner, she cited the dangers associated with the Retained EU Law Bill and spoke of her work as the Europe Spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats.  

For those of you unable to attend the reception you can watch a selection of the speeches here. 

On Friday, YEM members then took to Bush House at King’s College London for an action-packed day of political training and insight, beginning with a presentation and workshop from European Movement’s campaign and communications team on their Retained EU Law Bill campaign. This workshop provided YEM members with insider knowledge on what constructing an effective campaign looks like. 

Following on from this, YEM members received an eye-opening presentation from globally renowned pollsters, Opinium, who shared with us public attitudes around Brexit: past, present and future. After lunch, we then heard from an aspiring young journalist, Eleanor Longman-Rood, from The New European on the current landscape of the UK media and how to get your message across. 

We finished our afternoon’s training and capacity building with two in-house workshops, the first of which concentrated on public affairs and stakeholder mapping, and the second of which concentrated on our work campaigning to rejoin the Erasmus+ Programme. 

The entire YEM team is thrilled with the success of the Erasmus+ Academy and is confident that it places us on a strong footing to advance our campaign and strengthen our network of young pro-Europeans through the United Kingdom. 

Rejoining Erasmus+ could be a key step towards rebuilding bridges with Europe and this event proved that, together, we can restore the opportunities once afforded to young people in the UK pre-Brexit.  

Art O’Mahony  

Young European Movement Coordinator 

'Taking back control of our borders’ was one of the main slogans of the Vote Leave campaign, which told its supporters that immigration would go down.

That has not happened – immigration from the EU has gone down but overall immigration has not. Despite that, there are still labour shortages in key areas – including the NHS - where EU workers had previously filled gaps.

Neither has Brexit led to a reduction in irregular migration, notably across the Channel. Indeed, by removing the UK from the EU’s ‘Dublin Regulation’, it has made it more difficult to return asylum seekers to EU countries where they first arrived, for their claims to be processed there.

The UK is not part of European schemes – it opted out of these even before Brexit - to encourage the migration of skilled people or to provide legal routes to resettle people from war-torn parts of the world. If there are no legal routes, desperate people will try other means.

The UK receives – and always has received - relatively few asylum claims compared to many EU countries: in 2021, EU countries overall received about double the number of applications per capita as the UK. In 2020, when compared with EU countries, the UK ranked 14th in terms of the number of asylum applications per capita.

Brexit has also made it more difficult to work and exchange crime and justice information with authorities in EU countries, notably to prevent known criminals from entering the UK. In particular, UK border authorities no longer have instant access to the full data held by authorities in the EU. The UK is no longer a member of the EU’s crime-fighting body Europol.

The UK is now also outside the European Arrest Warrant scheme, which means it is now more difficult to extradite to the UK from Europe people who have committed serious offences in the UK. In the past, the EAW enabled the arrest of, for example, terrorists who had plotted explosions in London in 2005. Between 2009 and 2014, 63 suspects for child sex offences, 27 for rape and 44 for murder were extradited back to Britain to face charges.

All this means Brexit has left the UK more vulnerable to organised crime, including terrorism, major financial crime and people trafficking.

Over 630 000 people applied for asylum in the EU (about 14 per ten thousand of population) compared to under 50 000 in the UK (about 7.5 per ten thousand of population) – source UN. 

Retained EU Law Bill 

Democrats need to be vigilant about talk of ‘Brexit opportunities’ and especially the Retained EU Law Bill tabled on 22 September 2022 and passed by 280 votes to 225 at its second reading on 25 October.  

This Bill and a series of related measures to remove or weaken protections provided by EU law looks like cover for stripping away democratic rights and high EU standards for food and other products, as well as employment, environmental, health and consumer protection. For example, holiday and sick pay, parental leave, pension guarantees and safe limits on working time could be scrapped by Ministers using ‘secondary legislation’, i.e. without full debate in the Commons. Such protections could even just disappear from the statute book overnight, without any debate, as a result of an irresponsible ‘sunset clause’ set for the end of 2023.  

This is a bonfire of laws that work, to replace them either with a vacuum or with laws that make life worse.  TUC leader Frances O’Grady has said: “If this bill becomes law, vital protections could disappear overnight.” 

This process is also set to: 

• waste vast civil service time, with Britain in the worst economic crisis in decades; 
• create chaos in courts and employment tribunals, as long-established case law is invalidated; 
• cause massive uncertainty for businesses; 
• create additional trade barriers with the EU, by weakening UK regulation so that products for the UK market may not meet standards needed for export to the EU; 
• potentially provoke a trade war with the EU, by breaking the level playing field clauses in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, intended to prevent a deregulatory race to the bottom; 
• fail to respect the rights of the devolved nations to legislate for their jurisdictions. 

Many argue that the government will have no choice but to accept amendments watering down the Bill – for example by extending the sunset clause to 2026 – given the intense criticism from business, trade unions, consumer organisations, environmentalists and apolitical mass movements like the National Trust and Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.  

But simply removing the worst aspects of this Bill would not end the Brexit government’s dangerous overall agenda of doctrinaire deregulation and divergence from tried and tested EU law.  

A ream of other legislation is in the pipeline, on areas such as data protection, financial services, public procurement and many more. All of it will need to be scrutinised and fiercely opposed in any areas where it poses risks to individual rights, the economy or the environment.  

The government has not identified any significant, credible opportunities from Brexit. Jacob-Rees Mogg’s nine-point list - he obviously couldn’t find a tenth – was ridiculed even by many on his own side. For example, his proposal to allow energy inefficient vacuum cleaners in the UK was a charter for manufacturers to dump stocks of obsolete goods that they are no longer allowed to sell in the EU and that they are not interested in making, or making parts for, in the future.  

Despite a biased consultation, businesses and consumer organisations have given an emphatic thumbs down to the government’s nostalgia-fuelled idea of allowing products to be labelled solely in old imperial measures. Imperial measures were already used perfectly legally alongside metric ones when the UK was in the EU. Many younger Brits do not even understand imperial measures. Their sole use would prevent products from being exported and inhibit trade. 

But the fanatically deregulatory government is interested only in empty Brexiteer gesture politics rather than real opportunities that would bring genuine benefits.

On Saturday 4th February, 37 local groups across the country took part in the Retained EU Law Bill Action Day. This was a crucial next step in the campaign to ‘Save our Standards’.  

From Leeds to Lancaster, local groups handed out over 20,000 leaflets, managed to raise our petition to almost 40,000 signatures, and spoke to over 2,000 people about the dangers of the Retained EU Law Bill. An outstanding result from our network of activists.  

I want to say a big thank you to everyone who helped at the weekend to raise awareness about the dangers of the bill. 

The overall message we heard from the Retained EU Law Action Day was that public opinion is shifting, and EMUK would love to share some positive interactions that took place throughout the day.  

Read more

In the House of Commons on Wednesday 18th January 2023, MPs voted against amendments to delay the Retained EU Law Bill. This means that, as it stands, the Retained EU Law Bill will come into effect on December 31st, 2023, jeopardising the standards that keep us safe. 

In line with this, European Movement UK is doing everything we can to raise awareness surrounding the dangers of the bill over the coming weeks, before it comes back to the Commons for a final vote.  

With this deadline in mind, on Thursday 2nd February 2023, European Movement UK hosted a webinar where supporters were given the opportunity to hear from veteran campaigners on the risks of the Retained EU Law Bill, and the best ways to campaign against it, in preparation for our Retained EU Law Action day which took place on Saturday 4th February 2023.  

Speakers included Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion and EMUK Vice-President, Mhairi Snowden, Director of the Human Rights Consortium Scotland, Gareth Lloyd-Johnson, Campaigns Manager for Breast Cancer UK and our very own Retained EU Law Bill expert Richard Kilpatrick, Campaigns Manager for European Movement UK.  

Caroline Lucas MP discussed her work opposing the bill in Parliament and why she thinks it should be scrapped, as well as advice and arguments that she thinks work well when out campaigning against the bill.  Mhairi Snowden highlighted the human rights violations of the bill and went on to give a comprehensive yet easy to grasp list on all the things the bill affects. Gareth Lloyd-Johnson gave a detailed explanation of the ways that the bill is not only affecting cancer research but the access to chemicals, scientific research and data in the UK. Richard Kilpatrick ended by going into the more specific details of the bill as well as defining the dashboard, the sunset clause and a framework bill.  

The webinar also involved an open discussion between participants and speakers where a range of impressive and informed questions were asked and answered, four such questions are displayed below: 

Peter Burke asked this question to Caroline Lucas and received this answer:  

Q. Am I right in thinking that the bill cannot be implemented in Northern Ireland while the NIP is in place, as NI is in the EU Customs Union? Is that not likely to upset the DUP even more and make a return of the troubles more likely?

A. That is my understanding as well, and it’s interesting it has not been part of the discussions, at least not in the HOC chamber, around the NIP and so forth. But it certainly feeds into that, and just as you described it means that the chances of achieving stability there and averting the worst of the tension, we are already seeing are becoming less likely. It makes all of that tension much worse.

I don’t suppose you’re likely to get into that on the doorstep unless you’re speaking with someone that is extremely knowledgeable. But I would just end by saying that it is great to see that some people are really knowledgeable on the Retained EU Law Bill. But also, don’t worry if you aren’t, I think the most important thing to say is that there are massive risks to so many of the protections that have been so hard fought over decades. Whether that’s environment, workers’ rights, health and safety. The way the bill is being handled is just so undemocratic, the idea that it’s just left up to ministers to decide which bits they are going to keep and which bits they are going to throw away is terrible. So, I would advise sticking to these points when out campaigning as it really conveys what is at stake with this bill.  

Lucy Pope asked this question to Mhairi Snowden and received this answer:  

Q. Can the Scottish parliament and the Welsh Assemblies and Stormont (once back) override this law and re-enact these laws?

A. So I think that they wish they could, actually in fact I know from a Scottish Parliament point of view they wish they could. But the reality is a lot more complex than that and they are more restricted than you might imagine.

The Retained EU Law Bill is UK level legislation, and England are in effect giving themselves the power to legislate in devolved areas if they want to. But it looks very likely that the Scottish parliament will not give their consent to this bill. However, we’ve seen the Scottish Parliament (about seven times now since Brexit) not give their consent on certain things, but those things have gone ahead anyway. In that way this process is becoming less and less useful. So, because of the complexity of our constitutional situation there is very little that the Scottish parliament can do to challenge the Retained EU Law Bill.  

I think some of the things they can do to approach it is by keeping as much Retained EU Law in devolved areas as possible before that cliff-edge happens, and that is definitely what they will be focusing their attention on. There is actually also legislation in Scotland called the Continuity Act that is all about trying to keep pace with the EU. But even that is difficult to retain because it’s difficult to have higher standards in one part of the UK than in another, particularly in Scotland rather than England. In many ways England sets the standards and Scotland must follow suit across lots of different areas. I’m talking about Scotland as that is what I know, but I also know a lot of the same issues apply in Wales and Northern Ireland.  

Richard Fieldhouse asked this question to Gareth Lloyd-Johnson and received this answer:  

Q. Could you outline some of the implications for workplace / workers' rights please?

A. I think it’s just to reiterate that point, but as other speakers said it’s slightly difficult as we don’t know exactly what laws we are going to be dealing with. But certainly, higher standards of safety for workers is not the outcome we expect. Also, the problem is as I said we are blocking ourselves out of the science community, so we won’t necessarily have the data on the effects on workers going forward. So not only are we losing what was previously known, we are being blocked out of negotiations and from data in the future. Plus if changes are made in Europe, we can take this bill as a measure that future laws will be watered down before they meet our legislation putting our workers at further risk.

John Handford asked this question to Richard Kilpatrick and received this answer:  

Q. If the sunset clause is enacted, can a new bill reverse the effects by negating the first bill?

A. Yes, constitutionally yes. A new government is never bound by the previous. But we obviously need to defeat the sunset clause by 2023 first and we are leaning quite heavily on the Lords now given that that amendment did not pass at the Commons stage.

Throughout the webinar, participants showed interest in getting more involved with the next part of the ‘Save our Standards’ campaign including contacting Lords before the second reading on Monday 6th February 2023. Participants of the webinar will be happy to hear that following this discussion our team personally contacted all Lords who were down to attend the debate. This resulted in the vast majority of the 54 Lords picking apart the bill and dismissing it in its current form.  

Here are a few of our favourites, you can read:  

• Lord Heseltine's (President of the European Movement and Deputy Prime-Minister under Marget Thatcher) response to the bill here 
• Baroness Ludford’s (Liberal Democrat) response to the bill here 
• Baroness Chapman’s (Labour) response to the bill here  

Thank you again to everyone who attended the webinar, for your great questions and unique ideas on how we can take this campaign even further.  

To everyone who was unable to make it you can watch the full webinar here.  

Emma Knaggs 

Head of Grassroots Engagement EMUK  

Patrick testing article updated

Today marks three years since the UK withdrew from the European Union. Remember these?

Read more

“What on earth do the strikes have to do with Brexit?” 

“What on earth do the strikes have to do with Brexit?” This was the question asked by Kevin O'Sullivan recently on Talk TV. 

Quite a lot, actually.  

Nowhere else in Europe are we seeing industrial action on such a scale. The UK has not seen industrial action like this since the winter of discontent in 1978-79. 

When it comes to industrial action in the UK, the closest we saw to current strike levels was in 2011 when we lost 1.39m working days (ONS). In 2022, by October we had already lost 1.617 million working days.   

Recent data published by the UK in a Changing Europe and Centre for European Reform thinktanks revealed that in September 2022, the UK economy lost 330,000 workers because of Brexit. 

The UK has 58,000 fewer nurses than if the numbers arriving before Brexit had continued.   

Brexit-induced migratory hurdles and poor wages have made Britain an unattractive destination for Europe’s nurses. The number of EU and EFTA (European Free Trade Association) nurses in the UK has decreased by 28% from 38,992 in September 2016 to 28,007 in September 2021, forcing the NHS to recruit from ‘red list’ countries to meet staff shortages, a report from Nuffield Trust suggests. 

It is no coincidence then that NHS staff, postal workers and bus drivers are feeling the pressure, they have lost hundreds of their colleagues to Brexit.  

Take bus drivers, we are in need of them across the country, with shortages increasing since Brexit. Many operators note they have numerous EU drivers who used to work for them, sometimes seasonally, who would like to continue to do so but are unable to because bus driving is not included in the Skilled Worker Visa list and bus drivers are not considered a “Shortage Occupation” by the UK Government. 

It also doesn’t help that remaining bus drivers are being asked to change careers and become HGV drivers to fill the gap in drivers since Brexit. HGV drivers get paid on average £40,000 more annually than bus drivers (North East Bylines). So, it is no surprise that bus drivers are striking on the grounds of pay and staff shortages. 

Clearly, the recent strikes are a symptom of post-Brexit politics, where wages in the UK are stagnating, prices are soaring, and we are short of labour. 

Brexit is a key factor in the ongoing strikes, but this is not being talked about. Our government does not want to acknowledge the impact that losing thousands of vital EU workers has had on our public services. 

Brexit has ravaged the UK economy, an economy completely dependent on EU workers, and this is making the cost-of-living crisis far worse than it should have been. 

Instead of talking honestly about the effects of Brexit on the UK economy and the labour market, they continue to peddle what the Financial Times is calling the ‘conspiracy of silence’ on Brexit. 

Just as the Brexiteer government seems determined to get rid of EU Laws that protect our standards through the Retained EU Law Bill. The same government seems determined to stop strikes, not through negotiation, but by changing the law. The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill 2023 has now replaced a 2022 Bill limited to ‘transport strikes’, reflecting a shift in ambition.  

According to the UK in a Changing Europe, “While new legislation might seem to offer the Brexiteer government an opportunity to ‘take back control’, the UK’s relationship with Europe continues to pose problems. They have claimed that the United Nations agency, the International Labour Organization (ILO), supports such measures and that they are applied in France, Italy and Spain. 

Whilst the government’s ‘Memorandum on European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)’ asserts that the Bill is compatible with Convention rights, closer examination shows that neither of these claims hold water. Instead, the reality is that the UK is in danger of breaching obligations under the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA).” 

Once again, the Brexiteer government does not have a plan for the negative implications caused by Brexit.  

Anna Bird, 

CEO, European Movement UK 

Let us know if you agree. Do you see the link between Brexit and the strikes?